Young Writers Society

So you’re the young lady who knows everything?

Madame tapped Sophie sharply on the back, calling the young girl’s attention back to the well-dressed man standing in front of her. “Miss Sophie, it isn’t polite to ignore a financier’s questions,” she scolded. She smiled at the well-dressed man, “I apologize, Mister Galveston, the procedure hasn’t quite taken hold, and her mind is still prone to drifting.”

Mr. Galveston smiled, waving the thought away with his hand. “That’s only to be expected,” he said. “She’s undergone an extremely risky memory-enhancement procedure, and she’s only a child; even if she is, arguably, the most important child on the Earth.”

Madame’s posture straightened, a wide smile spreading over her full, red lips. “Why, thank you Mister Galveston,” she said. “Sophie, wasn’t that nice of Mister Galveston to say?”

Sophie nodded politely. “Yes, Madame,” she said. She smiled up at Mr. Galveston, folding her arms behind the back of her yellow party dress. “Thank you, sir.”

Mr. Galveston chuckled and reached his hand down to pat her on top of her thick brown curls. “No need to be thanking me, Miss,” he said. “However, if you could explain to Mister Yates precisely what is wrong with the European economy…” He turned and waved at a group of men gathered on another side of the room. “Yates, come here,” he called, “the child is going to solve that old debate once and for all!”

*

Faceless men in long white coats loomed over Sophie as she practically lay tilted back in a chair in room too bright for her eyes to see. Tubes and wires poked from her pale skin and criss-crossed into buzzing, whirring, beeping machines on either side of the table. Her toes curld as goose bumps ran over her skin, the rest of her body held stiff and motionless beneath thick leather restraints. She longed for the pretty blue dress she had been given when they left the orphanage that morning. It was much nicer than the faded grey thing she had worn before.

The men without faces poked at her, opened her head and prodded at her insides. They slid thin wafers of plastic and metal into the soft tissue inside her skull, but they felt like knives piercing into her consciousness.

A woman’s figure stood above her, holding colorful cards above Sophie’s face, asking her in a windchime voice “what do you see here?” and “can you tell me what this is?”. Sophie could hear her a small voice speaking out-loud the words she thought in her head. But she wasn’t sure the voice was her own.

The muscles in Sophie’s back tightened as the cold wafers were inched further into the warmth of her mind, all the wile the men without faces murmured things to each other, “another memory enhancement device, doctor” … “slowly as we proceed into the prefrontal cortex” … “tapping into long term memory storage”.

*

Sophie shivered, despite the light warmth that filled the inside of her skull. Night air wafted through the doors open to a star-bathed terrace, ruffling long white curtains and the dresses of ladies gathered nearby. Sophie tightened her fingers around Madame’s thick skirts as she inched herself further into their folds.

Madame nudged her away and ran a hand over the back of Sophie’s hair. “We’re really very impressed with the success of the project,” she said, continuing a conversation begun nearly an hour before with Mr. Yates, Mr. Galveston, and a finely dressed young couple named Grant that had joined them. “Considering the results of the first fourteen attempts, our Sophie is really quite extraordinary.”

“And you’ve done so well; she’s such a little darling!” Mrs. Grant cooed, folding her hands under her chin. “You are so lucky to have gotten this one!”

“Don’t be silly, Lily, she’s not done anything,” Mr. Grant said. “Congratulations is due to the hardy young girl.” He turned his gaze down to Sophie, smiling at her in the way adults do to inspire trust or confidence that is otherwise undeserved. “Let’s hear from the girl herself. What have you to say, dear?”

Sophie smoothed her hands over the skirt of her yellow party dress. “I’ve nothing to say,” she said without looking up at the adults gathered around her. Her cheeks burned, as they had been accustomed to doing lately when in such company.

They laughed as if they had heard a pleasant joke.

Sophie’s voice was so soft and delicate, she often had this reaction when speaking to adults. It was silly, she thought, considering how much more intelligent she was than they. Her fingers tightened around a fistful of her dress. She didn’t particularly feel more intelligent. Yet, she was told again and again that she was. That she was the most intelligent being on Earth.

“Now, Miss Sophie that’s not polite,” Madame scolded. “Go on, tell our fine financiers something you know.”

Sophie sighed, pulled up a sweet smile, and – after sifting through categories and lists in her head – spent several minutes explaining a highly complex theory of calculus, garnering several astonished looks from her audience. Soon every eye in the room was turned toward her, and every ear listening to what she had to say.

*

The shadow-men closed Sophie, and left her tiled back in the chair. She was never entirely alone; there was always a man in a coat nearby, scribbling on a pad of paper as he examined the interfaces of each machine connected to Sophie by wires and tubes. Once Madame came to sit with her, always staring at her bare head and the scars the criss-crossed her scalp, but she left soon after mumbling something about “correcting the girl’s indecency”.

Sophie’s head buzzed. It was so heavy, she couldn’t imagine being able to lift it when the restraints were pulled away from her and she was allowed to dress again and leave. They hadn’t told her it would feel this way, feel like she would never be able to rest her mind again.

Madame would be her caretaker, she had been told – like a mother, “But not your mother,” Madame clarified – when the first of the faceless men had visited her at the orphanage.

“How would you like to live a much better life, a much more important life?” they had asked her. “How would you like to know everything, and save the knowledge of the Earth? Even you must know the danger we are in of destroying ourselves. You know we’ve discovered other types of people in outer space? We’ve made friends with them, made new families with them, and they want to help us. Now if you’ll only sign a few letters, just your name, on a few papers and promise, promise, not to tell anyone what you’re doing, you can come with us and you can be important, Sophie. You can be important.”

And so she had signed her few letters on their few papers and agreed to let them change who she was.

The men without faces came back and stuck wires into two little metal tubes protruding from either side of her head, just behind her ears. Madame came again, and held Sophie’s hand. “You’ll feel some discomfort.”

“Initiate information download sequence…”

*

After naming off the capital cities of every minor country one of the young diplomats at the party could recall, Sophie was granted a moment to slip away from the crowd. “The doctors warn we must still be careful not to over-stimulate her,” Madame explained. “It will take some time yet for her body to accept the memory components.”

Sophie maintained a steady and well-mannered stride until she breached the open doorway onto the terrace. The moment the heat of the party was behind her Sophie broke into a run, the curtains in the doorway waving behind her. She ran, her little white shoes clicking on the stone pathways, through the moonlit gardens of the estate. It was the home of the lead financier, who happened to be the director of Sophie’s project.

Sophie came upon a short marble wall at the edge of a hill in the gardens. Several feet to either side of her extended elegant marble staircases that met at a single stone path at the base of the hill. The path wound through the gardens toward a pier that extended into the calm waters of a bay kissed with moonlight.

At the end of the pier stood a shuttle, shining white as it towered in the light of the moon.

She collapsed at the wall, falling to her knees on the perfect marble terrace. Through her mind played scene after scene of suffering and evil and darkness knit into the very humanity of her world. It wasn’t just thoughts, recollections of knowledge and stories that played through her mind, but physical memories. Flashes of images in front of her eyes. She could see it all so well. So utterly, painfully well.

Sobs choked at her throat, and she wished so wholeheartedly for this suffering she had asked for to go away.

*

“The process of transmitting the collected knowledge of humanity into one person’s mind – let alone one child’s mind – is a highly risky endeavor.”

Sophie sat crouched below the open sitting room window, her toes curling around lush green blades of grass, her eyes wide, her heart pounding with excitement. Shrubs rustled around her in the afternoon breeze. They had all been ushered out of the house when the men in suits had driven up in their shiny black car. But Sophie knew the best hiding places.

“There will be noticeable effects on the child’s behavior, and particular effects on the child’s mind that only they will perceive,” the voice of one of the men in suits continued. “However, we are confident in the success of recent trials, and are prepared to move forward with the project.”

“Let us remind you,” another of the men’s voices said, “that you will be in no way responsible for the chosen child once they sign the paperwork. We have arranged a caretaker specially trained to handle the special needs of the child preceeding and following the operation…”

Sophie didn’t need to understand the big words the men were saying to know that they were going to take one of the children away from the orphanage, and that they would never have to come back to this place again. They would be free.

Sophie wanted more than anything to be free.

*

Sophie pulled herself up from the marble terrace and lifted her gaze to the dazzling shuttle standing over the bay.

It was beautiful, even to a girl who knew everything about beauty. Sophie leaned on the wall, resting her chin in the palm of her hand as her tears dried in sticky streaks on her face. The slivers of metal in her head warmed the natural tissue around them as Sophie unconsciously ran through lists of shuttle parts and procedures for taking off and landing. She was well into the history of the Russian space program when a sharp crack sounded in the distance.

Sophie spun around, her gaze fixed on the sky, illuminated in a dazzling explosion of light, beyond the estate.

*

“A little girl entrusted with the knowledge of the human race,” Sir said. He stood in front of a tall mirror, adjusting a burgundy tie around his neck. “To think, all those candidates and they choose a little girl.”

Madame pressed another curl into Sophie’s thick brown hair. “Children have a higher capacity for memory storage,” she said. “You’re well aware of that, Richard.” She pinned back a strand of Sophie’s hair, the pin grazing the small metal tubes still lodged in her skull from the operation. Her hand paused, frozen with the pin clutched between her fingers, for a moment. “Besides… With the state of things, there wasn’t much time to waste searching for another candidate.”

“Yes, I know, nuclear threat and all that,” he said. “Still, I can only imagine how much easier it would have been to look after someone more…I don’t know, mature.”

A frown tugged at the edges of Sophie’s mouth. She bit her lip and held the little ragdoll she’d had since she could remember to her chest. She longed for the grassy gardens of the orphanage where she could hide away and daydream until one of the older boys came and shooed her back into the house. It had been months since the operation, nearly a year of social gatherings and parties much like the one they were preparing to attend tonight where financiers and wealthy diplomats wanted to see more of the girl who knew everything. As if she were a circus act and not the final hope of the Earth.

“Nonsense,” Madame said. “We couldn’t have asked for a better candidate.” She gave a sharp pull at Sophie’s hair to force it where she wanted it to go. “You know I’ve always wanted a daughter.”

“Mama,” Sophie whimpered as Madame shoved pins and clips into her hair. After all this time, her head still ached with the constant, unending stream of knowledge flowing through it.

Madame spun Sophie around, holding both hands on her shoulders. “Now Miss Sophie, you know you’re to call me Madame,” she said. “I’m not your Mama.”

“Yes, exactly,” Sir said. “She’ll never be your daughter, Claire. I worry you’ll get so attached I won’t know what to do with you when we have to let her go.”

Madame moved a few strands of Sophie’s hair and reached down to smooth the soft yellow party dress she wore. “There,” she said at last. “You look lovely, Miss Sophie.”

“Yes, yes, we all look lovely,” Sir said. He wrapped an arm around Madame’s waist and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Come, now, or we’ll be late.”

*

Sophie ran through the open terrace doors, back into the party. The heat that had blanketed the festivities in sleepy merriment had washed away, replaced with a tight, suffocating silence. The boisterous conversations and laughter had split into smaller pods of whispers and questions. Madame and Sir gathered around a television set into the wall, accompanied by Mr. Galveston and the Grant’s.

“There have been several attacks, resulting in the near demolition of three of the country’s major cities…”

Madame pressed a delicate hand to her red lips, Sir holding an arm around her waist, as they watched what unfolded on the television screen. Sophie didn’t need to watch to know what had happened. They were miles from the city, but close enough to see the aftermath of nuclear warfare streaking through the sky.

“It is assumed that what may follow the bombing of the nation’s metropolises is only nuclear—”

The television flashed off, followed by the lights that had bathed the party in a soft, ethereal glow only minutes earlier. In the next moment, raid sirens erupted through the night air outside the open terrace doors.

Partygoers screamed and shoved each other aside as they hurried in a panic toward the door to the extensive fallout shelter built beneath the estate. Madame and Sir searched the frantic crowd for Sophie’s face, running toward her as soon as they caught sight of her strangely calm expression among the crowd of panicked faces, accompanied by a man Sophie knew all too well: Jefferson Watt, the lead financier and head of Sophie’s project.

Madame grabbed Sophie around the waist, scooping her into her arms as the trio ran out the terrace door. Explosions rocked the night as the city in the distance was blown to pieces. The trio ran down the stone path that Sophie had taken not long before; however rather than stopping at the marble wall as Sophie had, they continued down the marble staircase toward the pier, toward the shuttle.

Mr. Watt wrenched Sophie from Madame’s arms as they ran. “Miss Sophie,” he shouted over the roar of planes flying overhead, coming from the airfield on the other side of the bay. “You recall your training?”

It was a pointless question; of course she knew every miniscule detail of the procedure as soon as it had been downloaded into her head. “Yes,” she said. He gave no acknowledgement that he had heard her, though it didn’t matter. Even if she hadn’t known her training, it would be too late now.

The trio stopped at the thick metal gates that separated the long pier in half, preventing anyone unauthorized from coming too close to the launch site. Mr. Watt handed Sophie back to Madame while he disappeared into a small shed jutting off from the pier. Madame set Sophie down and pulled the yellow party dress over her head. Mr. Watt returned with a small form-fitting flight suit into which the three of them slid Sophie.

“You can’t come any further,” Mr. Watt shouted to Madame and Sir as he keyed access codes into the interface beside the gates. “Say your goodbyes now.”

Madame pulled Sophie to her, pressing her face into the brown curls she had spent so long meticulously adjusting. “I know I haven’t been the best moth- caretaker,” she said, “but I am so very proud of you.”

Sir knelt beside them, resting a hand on Sophie’s shoulder. “Here,” he said once Madame released her. He handed Sophie the little ragdoll that Madame had insisted was inappropriate to bring along to this sort of function. “Something to remember us by.” There was a sad smile in his eyes that Sophie would remember for years after.

“Come, Sophie,” Mr. Watt yelled as the launch area began to rumble. “We don’t have much time."

*

“Richard, the Watt estate is the other way,” Madame said as their long black car pulled onto a winding country road that Sophie knew well – even before the operation.

“Beautiful observation, Claire,” Sir said as he navigated the dark twists and turns that led to a towering white farmhouse with the words ‘Claymont Orphanage’ painted in script on a sign out front.

“Richard, we’ll be late,” Madame said, turning in her seat to peer at the highway disappearing into the distance behind them. “This is an important gathering, at Jefferson Watt’s estate—”

Sir glanced back at Sophie sitting quietly with her hands folded in her lap – just as Madame had instructed her – in the back seat. “It’s only a short detour, Claire,” he said with a wink at Sophie.

They pulled into the makeshift dirt parking lot beside the house, and were greeted at the door by the elderly couple, the Smiths, that were the night caretakers at Claymont. All the children that had been around long enough to remember Sophie were seated – by choice or instruction, Sophie wasn’t sure – in the small sitting room at the front of the house.

The adults disappeared into the kitchen, Madame after much prodding by Sir, and left Sophie with the only people she had ever been able to call a family. Except now, she felt on display, stared at as if she were an act in the circus, some foreign extraterrestrial on display.

Only one of the children, a girl younger than Sophie who arrived at Claymont a few weeks before Sophie had been whisked away, spoke directly to her. After studying Sophie intently for several minutes she pulled her thumb out of her mouth and spoke. “So you’re going to see the aliens?”

“They’re not called aliens anymore, dummy,” a boy a year or so older than Sophie said. “Not since the astronauts started going out there and seeing ‘em, and people started living with ‘em.” A self-assured smile spread across his face. “And that started a hundred years ago. Now we do stuff with ‘em like they live on Earth with us.” He paused and crossed his arms over his chest. “See, she’s not the only one who knows everything.”

Another boy jumped up from where he sat on a couch and stood beside the first, mimicking his crossed-arm superiority. “I bet she doesn’t really know anything at all,” he said. “She’s just a robot with little computer chips in her head.” He laughed and grabbed the little thumb-sucking girl by the shoulders and pushed her toward Sophie. “Careful Emily, the robot’s going to get you!”

The little girl, Emily, screamed and ran from the room as the rest of the children laughed. They pointed at Sophie, chanting “robot” in a chorus of screams and mocking giggles. Sophie backed away from her ex-family, tears welling in her eyes, only to bump into Sir’s legs as he, Madame, and the Smith’s came back into the room. “Are we all getting along?” Mrs. Smith asked.

Sophie had never felt so alone.

*

An elevator sped upward, carrying Sophie to the part of the shuttle she would ride in. She watched through a small window as the small figures of Madame and Sir ran back through the gardens toward the estate where they would join the other partygoers in the shelter.

Explosions dotted the night sky with cracks of light like there was a lighting storm.

Mr. Watt had stayed at the bottom of the rocket, in a small control room where he could set the final codes in sequence before running back to the shelter himself.

Inside the rocket was small; big enough for Sophie to strap herself into a chair and wait for the shuttle to rocket itself on its designated course out of the Milky Way where she would be met and instructed on the next phase of the mission.

Sophie set her ragdoll on the chair, but pulled herself up to a window that looked back on the Earth below. The explosions were almost on the estate now, and she wondered if they knew where she was. Whoever, exactly, they were. She knew it could be anyone; any world power could have initiated this. It didn’t matter who, it only mattered when, and Sophie wasn’t sure she was ready for this to be then.

She watched the small black figure of Mr. Watt reach those open terrace doors. A countdown played over a speaker in the shuttle.

“Takeoff in five…”

Planes flew overhead, but kept their bellies closed as they doubled back over the estate toward the city. Her mind turned, running through names and faces and memories stored inside her like a database. As a side effect of the procedure, even her own memories were saved, word for word, inside her. “She is, arguably, the most important child on Earth.”

“Four…”

Sophie could feel her pulse in her wrists, her ankles, as she held onto the metal piping below the window. The flight suit was too tight. She had grown since the last time she’d worn it. It was too small. Too small. “Go on, tell our fine financiers something you know.”

“Three…”

Pins dug into her scalp. Sophie yanked at them, pulling all the little bows and barrettes out of her hair and letting them drop back into the shuttle. Her thick brown curls fell over her shoulders. “To think, all those candidates and they choose a little girl.”

“Two…”

Something inside her head itched. It was warm, the metal too unnatural inside her. Her natural tissue had accepted it, but it was warm. She could feel it. “She’s just a robot with little computer chips in her head.”

“One…”

Planes flew over the estate, dropping bombs on the long drive leading to the estate, catching fire to the fields of tall grass that surrounded the estate. The planes roared over the garden, shaking the trees and bushes. She longed to hide away in the tall grass of the gardens at Claymont. When boys would tease her and chase her inside, when the girls invited her to tea parties and puppet shows. “Are we all getting along?”

“Takeoff”

The shuttle rumbled and shook as the ignition system began and the rocket rose from the launch zone at the end of the pier. Sophie clung to the piping below the window, holding herself there, desperately wanting to watch the estate as it fell away below her. An enormous light erupted in the distance, mushrooming out into the air in a way Sophie had only seen on training videos. The shuttle was already too far above to be affected as the atoms split and washed over the countryside, eliminating everything in its path. Light erupted on all sides; as she rose into the sky she saw it everywhere. All over the Earth, atoms were splitting and turning everything to dust. “So you’re going to see the aliens?”

“No,” Sophie murmured, “I’m the alien.” And she watched as the Earth grew further and further away, as the world she knew better than anyone destroyed itself before her eyes.