By R. E. Diaz

Within a year of Dr. Theokleia Ouranidou’s tenure at the Vissel Tri-State Memory Care and Neurological Rehabilitation Centre, our success treating Alzheimer’s and Traumatic Brain Injury patients became the world standard. I saw unresponsive, even catatonic, patients awaken into a renewed, fully aware life with their loved ones. I saw war-injured veterans reacquire full control of their bodies after the undamaged parts of their brains completely retrained themselves in response to the physical therapy. 

Her groundbreaking RNA editing research alone would have advanced our treatment protocols by two decades. But she added an array of cognitive therapies to be used in synergy with the genetic and pharmacological treatments; and supplemented them with a sophisticated electromagnetic deep brain stimulation instrument of her own design. The results could only be described as miraculous. And it was all driven by a deep personal dedication to our patients. She knew every single one by name.  

Her name, she tried to keep out of the spotlight. However — when she brought back the heiress of the largest mining conglomerate in the country from a deep coma to lucid consciousness — no one could have kept that a secret. The first words the patient spoke revealed the so-called accident to have been sabotage, part of a hostile takeover scheme.

Law Enforcement agencies in all three states — and even the Federal Police and ASIO — took notice. I was there when she gave that first lecture to a packed auditorium: “Within hours of horrific accidents or crimes, those events get etched into our long-term memory by a protein avalanche, precipitated by the terror and the stress hormone deluge accompanying it.” 

She paced the stage, proving every point with the data flashing on the large viewscreen. But that wasn’t needed. The audience was totally captivated by her intensity. “But those memories,” she went on, “though consolidated, even stable, are also utterly fractured. Because, in a desperate attempt to hide the unbearable, our psyche crams them everywhere it can; their jagged edges digging into the soul like shards of glass embedded in living flesh. They get stuck in our now… never slipping into the past, unfailingly vivid, immutable, and disjointed.”

This too, she knew how to heal; how to bring the patient out of the nightmare into a new light, into a place where the memories lost all power of agony… where past was past, present was now, and future still had hope. The healed patient, lucid, unafraid, and willing to testify, was a boon to the police and investigators. 

I once asked her about the breaks I heard in her voice that day, the almost unnoticeable flashes of pain that crossed her lovely brow as she leaned on the podium. “I had a twin sister,” she confessed. “Long ago I lost contact with her. I looked; never found her. But I knew, as only twins can know, the day she died.” She swallowed and went on. “All I know is that she died forgotten by those she loved.”

That morning, as we paused at the coffee bar, Theokleia picked up that conversation as if it had happened minutes before. Tapping the cover of an archaeological journal from her native Greece, she looked up, with hope in her eyes, and said: “I think I may have finally found her tomb.”

There was no time to follow up on that conversation, we had to get the rooms and equipment ready for that afternoon’s appointment. 

I escorted the two federal agents and the Child Protection Services caseworker, with their ward, to Dr. Ouranidou’s consulting room. The flutter of Theokleia’s eyes echoed my own reaction at seeing how young the child was. But it was the barely audible gasp that escaped her throat — as she read the brief they handed us — that broke my heart. I had already guessed, from the bandages on that little body, how many operations it had taken to save his life. But nothing could have prepared us for the details of what he had witnessed, for the brutality with which his parents had been killed. 

Theokleia started working with him Tuesday afternoon. As always, she began by retrieving a tome-sized metal box from the safe in her office. We all assumed it was a hard drive, obviously hardened against tampering and probably containing hundreds of Terabytes of data. Once she inserted it into the front panel of the machine that occupied half the room, she brought her patient to the chair at its core. The child instinctively trusted her and allowed himself to be ensconced within the apparatus, his little head cradled within a bristling crown of a hundred coloured wires.

The CPS worker never left the boy’s side. As the days passed, the strain on her face grew from deep concern to fear. When the breakthrough came on Friday, the worker left the room in tears. I assumed the phone call she made was to her own family, to tell them she was finally coming home. I should have suspected something was wrong when she hid the phone as she heard my steps. I should have realised it when the backup escort, that the agents requested on their radios, arrived too early.

I saw it all begin through the hallway corner mirror. Three men strode through the twin doors of the waiting room, not even bothering to flash fake badges at the check-in desk. The senior federal agent reacted too late. He was shot in the head. The first nurse to scream was dragged out from behind the desk and carried as a human shield toward the main corridor by their leader.

“Go!” The other agent shouted, shoving the child and Theokleia toward the surgery wing of the hospital. “Run,” I yelled, stepping forward, reaching for the fire extinguisher on the wall. 

A bullet whizzing past my head, and the cry behind me, told me the agent was down. But at least for a few precious seconds I could be an obstacle. I flung the heavy metal cylinder across the floor. The first man lost his grip on the nurse as he came down. The second one jumped to the side to avoid falling with him. The third one already had his gun trained on me. 

But the CPS worker, our betrayer — wailing in a mad dash toward the front door — ran headlong into him. He shoved her down. “My family, my family!” she cried from her knees. “You promised.”

“They will kill them anyway,” Theokleia said, coming up behind me, the hard drive in her hand. “Step back; go to the child.” She told me, and I had to obey; and so did the CPS worker.

The leader of the thugs, upright again, raised his right hand and levelled his gun at the defiant woman now standing before him. “The child is too young to testify.” Theokleia’s voice was utterly calm. “Tell your boss I am his problem. I have video and audio recording of everything the child saw and heard.”

There was no need for further word. The gangsters were wearing earbuds. Within minutes, a man in a four-thousand-dollar suit entered through the double doors, with two bodyguards. “Doctor Ouranidou, your fame precedes you. I knew they would bring him to you.” He paused involuntarily as his eyes fully focused on her. “But the magazine articles don’t do you justice.” 

He glanced at the dead agent on the floor and at the other one, slumped against the far corridor wall; and us, cradling the boy. “Video and audio,” he muttered. “You expect me to believe —”

“That my machine records memories?” She finished the question for him as she held up the metal box. “Imagine what a man in your line of work could do with that power.” She let him consider that thought for just a moment and then she finished, her voice hardening: “But maybe I lied; I just wanted to see the head of the serpent.”

Anger flashed across the man’s face. “Shoot her!”

The first gangster swung his left hand up and squeezed a non-existent trigger. The shock in his face doubled as he did it again and again; until he noticed his right hand, still holding the gun, was hanging limply by his side. 

“Left, right;” Theokleia said, “It’s so hard to tell the difference sometimes.”

The gangster shook himself, grabbed the gun with his left hand, and then stopped, baffled. In utter disbelief he found himself turning the gun around and around in his hands. “Where, where is the trigger?”

“What the hell! Kill her,” the boss commanded the second gangster. The man responded instinctively, and blasted his gun, point-blank range, at the third one’s head.

“Him, her,” Theokleia taunted again: “language is such a complex thing.” 

Horrified, the boss realised he had pointed at his own man. 

“So many things you learn as a child.” She stepped forward. “But they’re no good if your brain can’t remember them... Take walking, for instance.” The second gangster lost his balance and fell to the floor, his limbs out of control. “Then there’s breathing.” She nodded at the first gangster; and he too went down, gasping. 

“Ooh,” she paused, a flash of amusement tingeing her voice, “an educated criminal! You are thinking that autonomic functions are not learned; that they cannot be forgotten. But believe me, you learned how to breathe. The moment you found yourself out of the womb, you learned in a hurry.”

The bodyguards started pulling their boss back. They barely drew their guns when she added: “Even as your heart learned the order in which its ventricles are supposed to pump your blood.” Horrible gurgles escaped their throats as blood started trickling out of their eyes and ears. “I guess the direction is important.” And they too collapsed, leaving their master alone before Theokleia Ouranidou, who was no longer human.

***

I have tried to sketch what I saw — what she was — but my hands will not do it. It is difficult enough to put it into words. Think of hematite, the stone, grey, polished, and glistening… but soft… and beautiful: head, neck, and torso smoothly shaped, woman shaped, tapering to a narrow waist. But just as the hips start to widen there are no thighs, no legs, instead six or eight slick tentacles splay to the floor and fold into coils supporting her gliding form. And her arms are just the same: two supple tentacles that end, not in hands, but in fans of tiny tentacles, each one splitting into tinier ones, again and again; until all you can see as they move is a blur, a cloud. Such is also the living hair that cascades from that grey, lovely, featureless face. I know I have seen that fractal progression before.

***

Defenceless, paralysed, sweating profusely in terror, the man could only stare as she drew up to him. “No,” she said, as her million fingerlings played over his face, running over his forehead, his temples; crossing imperceptibly, unimpeded, through skin and bone into his brain, “I am not going to kill you. That would be too kind.” 

She drew back, lifted up the metal box, and swung open its cover, like a lid. And reaching in, she pulled a formless tangle out. “I have something for you. Really, it belongs to you anyway… because it was you who gave it to the child.”

His eyes widened, his mouth tried to scream, but there was nothing he could do. Her hand took the thing and shoved it into his brain. Then he finally shrieked, crumbling onto the floor, writhing like a wounded snake. 

***

I finally recalled where I had seen that fractal progression… in my neurophysiology textbook: neural networks.

I cannot remember her human face anymore. I know she was beautiful. But I am sure what we all saw was but a reflection of our expectations. I know she turned to me, caressed the thousand unasked questions in my mind, and answered only one.

Since then, whenever I see that archaeological journal, I think of ancient stories: of the grey, featureless faces of the Graeae, of the coiling tresses of Gorgons and Furies, of Gigantes walking on snake legs; and I hear her voice clearly in my head:

 “Mnemosyne was my sister.”

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