CHAPTER 11: Edited

    * Above the silhouettes of the pines, the sky is so clear and black and bright I can see the tiniest pinpricks of stars, see where they cluster and form the milky way, see every constellation shining eagerly. I reach out to touch them. I'm drawn to one star, hot and blue. It burns my hand as it draws nearer, heading straight down towards me. I turn to the person beside me. He or she, I can't tell, but we're both naked.*

     “GOOD WORK, ALPHA.”

     As I come to my senses, I still feel an urge to run at the sight of her, but slowly my head clears and I realize that I’m not in any current danger.

     “OH... YEAH. THIS IS GREAT.”

       I’m on her computer desk and she’s clicking away, scanning through the footage and splitting it up into clips. I notice some of them are in green night-vision mode, the ones filmed from me in-shoe.

     Suddenly she says, “YOU’VE NEVER SEEN YOURSELF REGENERATE, HAVE YOU?”      I haven’t. Maybe I didn’t ever want to think about it.

       Miranda looks at me expectantly, and I turn to the screen. It's the recording from her visor, and I watch through Miranda’s eyes. I wince as I see myself disappear under her shoe, emerging moments later as a small jet of blood and intestines. I start to feel light-headed watching myself die. On the screen, she lifts her foot and looks at her sole, and there I see myself, a crimson blotch on the bottom of her shoe and on the floor. The flattened little clothes fail to hide all the flattened organs and bone fragments. I can see where my brain spurted out of my skull onto the floor, and I can make out my legs mashed into her shoe.  She drags her foot back on the floor, chuckling as she smears my remains. I feel almost out of this world, disconnected, floating, nauseous. Why did she show me that part?

     “OKAY THIS TIME FOR REAL. WAIT FOR IT,” Miranda says. The scene ends when she walks away, and Miranda opens a different clip. I realize this must be the part that's edited out. On the screen she kneels down, and we watch closely.      It’s like the film is in reverse, but its not. The blood smear slowly, imperceptibly at first, starts to shrink. It’s edges recede, individual spatters disappear into themselves and the largest concentration of my remains seems to grow in thickness. It’s like there's an invisible sponge slowly absorbing all my blood into one spot. Clumps form, red globs on top of the stained clothes, which grow cleaner by the second. Organs and bones start to formulate, as if being built by microscopic workers. A skull manifests itself grimly. Limbs appear, tissue and ligaments wrapping around bones, and then muscle, and then eyeballs staring at nothing. Then skin, as if bubbling and foaming up to the surface from below. Lastly hair sprouts. I realize I’ve been staring, hardly blinking for around five minutes. I guess that’s how long it takes.

     “NEAT HUH?” she says.