After Image

After the morning’s grueling exercises that Viola’s body refused to adjust to, to the annoyance of Dr. Ludlow, she found herself trying not to feel completely exhausted. She imagined herself punching him in the nose like she had Will Czernicki.

She quickly brushed aside the thought and instead took another demeaning shower and clothed herself. She decided to wear a cream coloured, short sleeved, knee length dress today with a sleeveless brown leather overcoat that was belted snuggly around her waist. There was also a belt that she did up as a collar attached to the overcoat. Smoothing out the dress, she glanced herself over in the mirror. With the cream coloured knee socks and Mary-Janes she was wearing she felt like a doll, until she looked up at her hair. A doll that a child decided to cut all the hair off of. After a month, her hair was growing back thick in brown, a spikey fuzz about an inch in length on her head. She had a hard time deciding what to do with it and instead usually found herself wearing a hat or scarf to cover it. She grabbed a long brown scarf that was hanging from the towel rack and twisted it up into an African style head wrap.

Once she was finished, glove back on her hand and the guard leaving her room, she wandered over to her desk and plugged in her ear buds, singing along to the Ayumi Hamasaki song that started to play. She picked up her pen in her left hand and began her daily exercises. When she had first started a month ago, she had started with simple things: holding her utensils in her left hand instead of the right or brushing her teeth with her left hand. The amount of built up frustration she got doing these small, mundane things with difficulty almost made her give up completely. Then she remembered the long and very annoying month she had spent trying to learn how to use an ergonomic keyboard instead of a standard one. That had been a painful month. Viola had learned from that experience that things did not click in her mind at all and she would blunder through, and as if a light switch was flicked on, one day she would not be able to do the task and immediately the next day she would be able to do it with ease. She was expecting becoming ambidextrous to be the same thing, but it was a completely different sort of task from training your body to change a routine slightly and start to use a limb that for twenty five years you only used in a supportive capacity. Two weeks ago she had started practicing writing with her left hand as it seemed the easiest way to form the ability to Image with it. Her awkward writing was slowly improving, but although she tried to Image, she still didn’t have the control with her left hand that she did on her right and Images just refused to coalesce in reality when touched. She was beginning to think the whole thing was fruitless, for even if she did somehow manage to form Images with her left hand, she was pretty sure a glove over that hand would come before she could do anything meaningful about her situation. Nevertheless, the hope of some sort of change was the only thing keeping her going forward each day with the ever looming thought that at any moment they could hurt her family. Viola shook the thought away and concentrated on writing, finally stopping her singing and instead going to a gentle hum to give herself more ability to concentrate on writing.

She was so completely absorbed in her work that when she felt a hand on her shoulder she shrieked in alarm pushing the chair into the person who had startled her and knocking them flat to the floor. Gaining her composure, she pulled the ear buds out of her ears and turned to see a guard sprawled on the floor. The other guard stood dumbfounded at the door. Viola rushed out of her chair and went to the prone guard’s side.

“Oh, I am so sorry. I didn’t hear you come in. You startled me. Here let me help you up,” Viola said reaching out a hand to the fallen guard. The guard looked up at her in puzzlement and finally reached for her hand.

Viola laughed. “Don’t look so stunned. I’m not a resentful monster,” Viola replied and once the guard was on his feet, she let him and the other guard escort her to the quantum computer room. Once she was secured in the chair, the guards left and Dr. Pfister instead came into view, followed by Drs. Ludlow and Holman.

“Looks like today we are ready to move on to other stages of our experimentation, Viola,” Dr. Pfister said, consulting his tablet.

“Oh no more simple objects of increasing size?” Viola asked referring to the last month where they had just been assessing how big an object she could Image. Yesterday she had been taken outside for apparently the last time and had imaged a box the size of the biblical ark. Apparently they were tired of assessing her seemingly limitless ability to Image objects of any size.

“Yes. We are moving on to complex objects,” Dr. Pfister said.

“Sounds a lot more stimulating than giant boxes,” Viola replied.

“Could you please Image for us a machine that produces a 3D holographic image?” Dr. Holman asked.

Instead of replying, Viola saw in her mind a small handheld disc. She imagined a person showing holographic images of their family to someone on this disc and felt a tingle as the Image appeared on the table that was connected to her chair. Dr. Ludlow picked it up off the surface holding it in his palm and quirked his eyebrow.

“This doesn’t look very sophisticated,” He said.

“Neither does a square box with a screen, but people are able to use them all the time to talk to people, take pictures, surf the internet, text…” Viola let her sentence trail off. “There should be two buttons on the surface. Either one of them should get you a holographic image. I will leave it up to your backwards engineers to figure out how the rest of it works.”

Dr. Ludlow hit a button and suddenly Viola was seeing the image of a blond woman in three dimensions projected above the sphere. It was the same picture that she had seen in her mind and she felt a little jolt of guilt for having taken someone’s precious memories. Both Dr. Pfister and Dr. Holman were ogling the imaging on either side of Dr. Ludlow.

“That is amazing, Viola,” Dr. Holman said running her fingers through the hologram and pulling back quickly. “Kind of tickles when you put your hand in it,” she said rubbing her fingers to reset the nerves.

“Excellent,” Dr. Pfister said suddenly turning away from the holographic projector and instead back to his tablet. “Could you please make an Image of something from that same world.” Viola paused to consider his question for a moment.

“You don’t have a specific item for me to Image, just that it be from the same world that I pulled the holographic projector from?”

“That is correct,” Dr. Pfister replied.

“I don’t even know how to begin to do that,” Viola replied. She was thinking about the data that Dr. Holman was always collecting during experimentation. She had never understood the string of numbers that were on her display and suddenly it dawned on her that they were monitoring the source of the item Imaged, literally mapping the coordinates to other universes. What Viola could remember with regards to those numbers was that none of them had been the same, not once. Could she really have enough control to Image an object from the same world she had previously? That seems like a lot of calculations. I don’t even know how my brain picks the places it Images from, how am I supposed to correctly guess the same place I Imaged from before?

“Well as you have pointed out on numerous occasions, if we give you too much information about the process you are going to get bogged down in the details. Just try instinctually like you have with everything else,” Dr. Pfister replied condescendingly.

Viola just glared at him and concentrated. She imagined a small gilded music box, antique-like with a wind up spinning cylinder and extruding pins, but instead of a glass dancing ballerina she imagined instead a very complicated clockwork dancer that performed complex dance moves. Could something as beautiful as you come from the same world as the holographic disc? She felt her hand tingle and opened her eyes to watch as Dr. Ludlow opened the box and Clair de Lune began to play. She couldn’t see the tiny clockwork dancer from where she was but saw Dr. Holman’s face light up in fascination. Dr. Pfister merely pulled the tablet Dr. Holman was holding away from her and glanced at the data.

“Another object from the same place please,” Dr. Pfister demanded.

Viola felt slightly elated at his comment as it meant that she had in fact made the music box come from the same universe as the holographic disc. As she thought of this strange and amazingly complex world she was drawing from, the Image of an orchid flashed through her mind and before she could even register what she had seen she felt the tingle as quantum energy was drawn from her to form it. She opened her eyes again and saw a blood red orchid sitting on the table. Dr. Pfister didn’t even register what she had Imaged, but nodded slightly in approval at the data he was seeing on the tablet. Dr. Ludlow, however, looked slightly aghast.

“You can Image organic material? Fascinating!” He replied at the sight of the orchid.

“Guess they didn’t tell you that the first Image I ever created was of a human male. Mind you, he had memory loss at the beginning, but it was all very violent and unplanned, so I guess that memory loss for a short week was better than missing limbs,” Viola replied. All three of the doctors looked up at Viola in mild shock.

“Okay, so they didn’t tell you that then,” Viola said sheepishly. “So, ready to move on to some of the gadgets that I’m sure the government is requesting? I’m sure after more than a month of testing I’ve got this down pretty good.”

“I’m sure they will approve that for tomorrow, for now, let’s see if we can repeat your ability to Image multiple objects from the same universe shall we. Let’s start with a different location this time.” Viola sighed and nodded. The tediousness of the experimentation that was required was mind numbingly boring. Yes, she was exercising her ability and become quite adept at control, but Imaging useless objects for the sake of a test was tiresome. Even if she was a captive, the least she could be was useful. At least tomorrow she would have some better stimulation. Until then she listened to Dr. Pfister as he droned on and complied with whatever Image or request he had.

The next day when they secured Viola in her Imaging chair she was trying to keep her excitement down. The last month of Images had been standard and boring up until yesterday and she was excited to finally exercise her imagination. At the same time, she felt conflicted about the whole thing, seeing as she was being held against her will. Was it all right to like the work you were forced to do? Her stomach felt queasy after that thought and she tried to steer her thoughts back to the fact that she was doing this so that her family was safe. It occurred to her that thinking about her family also wasn’t a safe topic as she missed talking to them. Even though she no longer lived in the same town as them, she spent at least once or twice a week talking to them on the phone and making them presents that she would send in the mail – mostly books. She missed singing to them. Every time she got on the phone with Olivia, her first request was always “sing me Stray Child.” Their small voices were so full of life; it made her chest ache with pain and she suddenly inhaled sharply, holding back a sob. Dr. Holman looked in her direction away from her start-up checklist.

“Something wrong?” She asked with mild concern. Viola figured it was more out of concern to know if they could proceed with the experiments. So exhaled her breath slowly and haltingly, trying to get the pain to lessen.

“Nothing. Let’s get started,” Viola replied.

“I was wondering the best way to proceed with this. I have blueprints for quite a few of the projects, concept designs as well, I also have technical descriptions. Which do you think would be the best?” Dr. Pfister asked.

“Well as I work visually, let me see the concept designs first. We can proceed from there,” Viola replied.

Dr. Pfister nodded and Dr. Ludlow brought his tablet forward and set it on Viola’s lap. She looked down at it and back up at Dr. Ludlow. “Can I at least have my left arm free? After a month, you have to know that I am not going to do anything stupid.” Dr. Pfister scoffed at this remark, but Dr. Ludlow responded by freeing Viola’s left hand. She shook out the cramp she had in it and steadied the tablet, looking at the concept design. It looked like a computer workstation using interactive holographic images. Taking a deep breath Viola looked away from the tablet and towards the empty table that Dr. Ludlow was once again standing beside. She could see it in her mind. A slim surface that sat on a desk top or attached to a wall. She watched as a woman in her mind slipped on a thin pair of gloves. She saw the woman make a gesture with her hand and suddenly she was encircled by screens and data. It was breath taking to watch her hands dance around from holographic image to holographic image as she sought the processes she needed for that day. Viola almost forgot for a moment she was Imaging until she felt a violent shock from her fingers. She opened her eyes and looked at the Image table. She saw the holographic computer and the gloves sitting on its surface. She wiggled her fingers in response to the sharp power surge and frowned. I wonder if I will ever be able to control the release of power when I pull complicated Images. I am tired of being shocked and thrown across the room. She thought of Imaging Eli and the sunken ship and crinkled her nose.

”I can regulate the energy for you if you would like,” Viola heard Quinn say in her head.

“That would be extremely helpful, Quinn, thank you,” Viola replied in her mind.

The three scientists were not paying attention to Viola, which she was grateful for, and were instead examining Viola’s image before they got someone to cart it away to the project developers where they could examine the tech against their schematics. Viola felt as if they were all cheaters. Instead of that thrill of making your lifelong project work they were skipping that completely. Backwards engineering, even if it was your design, seemed like cheating. She couldn’t figure out how those engineers and scientists would ever live with themselves. At least what I Image isn’t my life’s work. Viola giggled at this thought which brought Dr. Pfister’s attention back towards her.

“You seem in a particularly good mood today,” Dr. Pfister said, loading another concept design onto the tablet Viola was holding.

“Sometimes my thoughts wander to amusing things,” Viola replied smiling and looked down at the tablet, which produced a sobriety to her features immediately.

“Is that a gun?” Viola asked.

“The technical specifications say that it is a prototype for a laser based weapon,” Dr. Ludlow replied.

Viola shook her head. “I’m not Imaging that,” She said frankly.

“Excuse me?” Dr. Pfister said standing menacingly over Viola.

“I will never, under any circumstance, create anything that will be used to hurt someone. Whether that be a poison, a gas, or a weapon, or anything else I can’t think of right now. I will help you advance technology and science and health care, but I will never, ever produce a weapon for you,” Viola replied with a force that she had never used in the presence of anyone. Her own tone of voice startled her. She didn’t know she had it in her to be so firm in her conviction to say no.

“You will produce whatever is expected of you, Ms. Lavallee,” Dr. Pfister started and leaned in closer to Viola matching her stony face, “or I am sure you know the consequences.”

“You can threaten my family all you want, but if I have to choose between them or potentially killing thousands, if not millions because of weapons I helped produce, I would have to choose the millions. I could never ever live with myself with blood on my hands. If you chose to kill my family because I won’t produce weapons for you, the blood is on your hands, not mine,” Viola said. She was shaking slightly, angry that she was being forced to make this choice at all. Did I really choose souls of people that I don’t even know over my family? The whole idea of having to make the choice in the first place made her sick, but she refused to shed tears in Dr. Pfister’s presence.

“You should know, Dr. Pfister, that if you do sign the execution order for my family, I will hunt you down to the ends of the earth and make sure you pay for their blood. You can guarantee that nothing on this earth or any other earth will stop me.”

Dr. Pfister backed away slowly from Viola. The look that she held on her face caused him a great deal of terror and he swallowed loudly to hold back his sudden fear. No point in angering someone with her power, who knew what she would discover about herself if pushed too far.

The door to the quantum computer room opened and Will stood in the doorway. “I think that is enough for today, doctors,” Will said, walking into the room and letting Viola free of the chair. He led her out the door as she slipped her glove back on. She said nothing as they walked, just vibrated with anger. She tried to calm herself down; she hated being angry. Anger brought with it her childhood where she had been out of control, a ball of anger that lashed out at anything and everything that was in her way. She had been explosive and violent. She remembered when she had decided not to be a rage filled person any longer. She had been twelve years old and her sister Haleigh had been trying to boss her around, which Haleigh knew always made Viola explode with anger. This time, despite Viola yelling at the top of her lungs making both their ears ring and throwing things around the room, Haleigh didn’t let up and kept jibing Viola with her words until Viola had let out a feral scream and lunged at her sister, striking her with such force on the back that Haleigh had collapsed onto the floor unable to breath. Viola had come out of her haze of rage instantly. She tried to apologize, but her mother had given her a cold hard stare and sent her to her room. She had to listen to Haleigh, after gaining back her breath, crying as she told the horror story of what Viola had done. It was then that Viola had realized that no matter how provoked she felt, her rage was her own fault and no one else’s. From that day forward she had worked hard to control the hot rage that was deep inside her. It wasn’t until she had turned twenty one and started doing Yoga and meditation on a regular basis that she had finally freed herself from that monster of hate. She felt it leaking back into her soul once again and suddenly wasn’t sure why she had let it go so completely. Had she held on to that rage would she be here, trapped in this place, being manipulated and controlled? She shook that thought from her mind as they reached the door to her prison. Once inside she finally turned to look at Will, the flame of hatred still burning in her eyes.

“Have I signed my family’s execution order?” Her voice was stone.

“No, Viola. Your family is safe, I promise.” Will turned to leave and stopped at the door looking back at Viola, the fire was leaching out of her eyes and she seemed to be calming down. “I’ve never seen this side of you,” Will replied.

Viola cast her gaze downwards embarrassed. “No one has, for a long time. I used to be full of nothing but anger for a long time. It is not something I ever want to go back to. So don’t make me,” Viola replied. She turned her back on Will and waited for him to leave. As soon as she heard the door close, she went to her bed and curled up in the fetal position trying to breathe slowly. She let the tears she had been holding back fall silently. She flicked her phone on and went through her music until she found the one song that helped to keep her calm, and pushed play. She let Hepatica by Yuki Kajiura repeat over and over again until she fell asleep.

Will reviewed the video footage of Viola from her session of Imaging that afternoon. He watched as Dr. Pfister inched in closer and closer towards her, causing Viola to pulse with rage. He watched as she spoke, her body flickering and shimmering in and out of existence as her rage summoned her power to her. He watched Dr. Pfister back away from her as her body flickered and faded. He looked terrified, as did the two other scientists in the room. They were scared that that buildup of power that her anger was causing was going to cause an explosion. He watched himself enter the room and saw Viola flicker back into a solid state, unaware that she had almost traveled again into another universe. Dr. Pfister and his colleagues were already going over the data of that event. Will had hoped they realized the seriousness of pushing Viola too far now. Once she understood what she was capable of, there would be no stopping her, and as much as Will hoped she discovered what she was capable of, he wanted it to be the same sweet, gentle, caring Viola that he knew that figured it out, rather than the cold, angry monster that she had suddenly turned into in that room. That cold rage was the rage that Will saw in Violet every day. The whole reason why he had decided to help in this project was because he didn’t want a person like Violet Ironside to be walking around with the power to Image. Imagining that power in her hands sent chills down Will’s spine.

He hoped Viola would stay her kind self long enough for him to work out a way of getting her free from here. For if she reverted back to that cold rage permanently, Will had no intention of letting that loose on the world.