Chapter Four

Clio

“You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

Clio stared intently at the screen flashing lights before him, a kaleidoscope of scenery that depicted a landscape he might never see himself: an autumn afternoon, windblown and bittersweet with its dull coloring. 

“And once, I found myself feeling very much alone,” Christopher Robin said softly from the television set.

“And what did you do then?” wondered Winnie the Pooh, in his bumbly, pondering voice.

“”I thought of you, Pooh,” Christopher admitted softly, the sound of his voice echoing only slightly with Clio’s, as Clio whispered the lines over him, word for word.

“Hmm, that’s what I would have done.”

Then the music changed, picking up the piano notes as the clouds warmed as the sun dipped, yet still, the scene looked so cold.

“Pooh Bear, I’ve been told that I’ll be leaving again,” said Christopher with Clio, turning away.

“Again? Shall I find you again?” Pooh asked worriedly, along with Clio, his own voice growing softer.

“I’ll be back,” assured Christopher. “Promise me you’ll always be here? Even when I’m a hundred?”

Pooh had to think about this, tapping his head as he pondered. “How old shall I be then?”

“Ninety-nine,” Christopher giggled, causing Clio to echo the reaction.

“I promise,” said Pooh.

“Forever and ever?”

“Forever and ever.”

The screen blurred as the music picked up, ending the scene, and that was when Miss Geneive stepped forward to remotely turn the television off, as if she had been waiting, thrumming her stubby nails, for the exact second that it would be fair to do so.

Clio was alone in the theater room with her, as the other children had gone to bed. He had been allowed to stay up an extra half hour, as today had been his birthday.

He was thirteen. Teen. It was an exciting concept, to feel closer to the day in which he would be released. Yet he didn’t feel older, nor wiser, nor any of the measured competency he was sure one was supposed to feel approaching adulthood.

There was a deep, internal fear inside of him that had been growing as of late: what if the PCA realized how childish he was, how little he knew about life and the outside world, and decided he wasn’t fit for the world? The PCA, with their careful teachings and instruction, were prepping him for a realm he was unprepared for, and he felt guilty by the prospect of having to hide his shortcomings from them, his inadequacy of how he was failing them by not understanding simple things. Like puberty.

This somewhat-new emotion, the burden of his inadequacy, had grown with the last several labs that he had done.

As he thought of the labs, his thoughts turned dark.

But then he blinked and allowed Miss Geneieve to guide him back to his room, where she left him to his solitude.

Clio pattered about the room, preparing himself for bed, though when it finally came to sleep, he found that the discomfort of his thoughts kept him up, as they would not fit snuggly away for him to sleep. He consistently marveled over all that he did not know, and all that he wanted in life, yet did not have.

Shockingly, tears began to run down his face. Startled by the sensation, Clio reached up to catch the moisture on parade down his cheek, feeling the substance with his fingers in bewilderment. Why was he crying?

Was it Agent Jackson’s strange behavior?

Was it the attitude of the researchers he visited at Lab?

Was it the feeling that everyone was keeping something from him, leading him to wonder how alone he was?

“You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think,” he whispered to himself, and finally shut his eyes.

A few hours later, he woke, startled by an odd dream he did not remember, laying in his sweat, the sheets beneath him damp, skin slick and clammy.

He shot up to sit, instinct defining that something wasn’t right. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before he’d fallen asleep, but a quick glance at the headboard alarm clock showed it had been a few hours.

Gingerly, he felt the sheets beneath him. 

He had peed the bed.

Making a startled noise, he quickly raced over to the washroom, stripping off his clothes to relieve himself. What he discovered in his underpants left him confused. They were wet, yes, but neither the texture nor color were consistent with what he knew to be urine.

Add to the fact that he hadn’t wet the bed in several years, he was left confused and disitrubed by his findings.

Something is wrong.

Swallowing, his entire body trembling, he began further investigation upon himself and finding that yes, something could not be right with him.

Stricken with panic, Clio began pacing, clutching the underwear at his side, unsure what to do. The PCA had been waiting for him to reach puberty, and though he didn’t know what or when that was to be, exactly, he knew that it had something to do with his lower region. They’d been measuring down there.

What would they do if they found out he was broken? That his body had produced something pale and tacky?

Would the PCA not want him? Would they decide he wasn’t good enough to be released? Only good children were released.

Would Agent Jackson hate him because he wasn’t good?

Clio ran to the toilet and tried to flush his soiled underpants down the toilet. “Go down, go down,” he whispered to himself, now in tears, when the cloth immediately clogged the watery hole at the bottom of the basin. It gurgled for a bit, and then began to flood up, the cloth in its wake.

Panicking, Clio ran back to his room and began stripping the sheets, pulling them off haphazardly and shoving them in the only place he had access to where he could store them: under the bed. Yet the mound of linens was clearly visible.

Doubtless, he was still clearly in danger of it being discovered, the strange substance that had come from him.

He sobbed, breathing hard, and continued pacing.

“What…who’s there?” 

Clio stopped for a moment, startled by the voice. 

It had not been his own.

The sound had not come from someone he had heard within his room, or even beyond outside, yet instead it came from somewhere within him, as though he had stolen someone’s thought that was not his own.

The voice he had heard hadn’t come fully in a language, yet in ideas; the desire to know who and what, without syntax. It was like an animal expressing the need for food without words.

Yet the voice had come from someone, and he didn’t know who, nor did he know how he had heard it in his head, obviously.

But still, there was something familiar about the presence he had felt. It felt youthful, as though the person speaking to him telepathically was someone he had met before.

Yet that was impossible, as Clio had met very few people.

Clio had been shocked out of his tears, but now he wiped his eyes, turning his head around, as though the source might appear.

“Hello?” he said to the empty air, deflating in disappointment when there was no reply. But then he tried reaching inside of himself, stretching out to what he hoped was the source of the voice, trying to make the same connection that the voice had made with him.

“Hello?” he asked tentatively.

“You? Who? What?” There was a burst of energy on the other side of the connection, as though whoever was at the end of it was just as surprised as Clio that this miraculous connection had been made.

After just a moment of the persistent flashes of energy, Clio’s head began to ache and he discovered he could hush the voice, and did so. “Who are you?” he tried instead, as it seemed as though he would be taking the lead when it came to conversation in a language.

The connection was silent for a moment, but then the person shared an image: it was Clio himself, yet with much longer hair and something seemingly off about him. The image of himself looked paler, if that were possible. Unhealthy. Distressed.

Clio shook his head, frustrated with the person communicating with him and unable to understand how the person had been able to produce this off vision of himself.

“That’s me,” Clio insisted.

“Me,” the voice immediately shot back, the response vicious and immediate.

Deciding to leave the disagreement there (Clio detested disagreements), Clio shivered without his night clothes, a sudden idea coming to him.

“Can you help me?” he asked hopefully, sending the mind intruder images of his underpants and ruined linens, his cheeks warm with the memory-based admission. It helped that he could not see this intruder, nor knew them. He suspected that they were some type of vis user, for them to be able to initiate a unique power such as this.

There was another pause from the voice, and then Clio’s mind erupted with evasive imagery. There were moments of Clio, the other Clio, naked, with other people, lab testing, touching, moans, screaming.

“STOP!” Clio shrieked.

Immediately, the voice and the person connected to him vanished.

Clio stood still, realizing that he was clutching his head as the images, though no longer pressed upon him, still swirled in his memory.

He’d never been more disturbed.

He felt as though he were waking up from a nightmare only to realize he was still in one, and with what his body had just done, and what he had just witnessed, he felt it when his mind decided to give up.

He needed someone. He couldn’t be alone anymore. 

“You’re braver than you believe, stronger than…” he tried, though was unable to finish, for at the moment, he forgot the words.

Clio paced all night until, in the morning, a guard found him like that.