Alone.

一个人 / YI GE REN by: 

07.04.2040.
Today I saw someone new lying in the Cage. She was beautiful—East Asian descent, heart-shaped face, and she had a well-kept body. She was wearing a long white smock, but Nat always made everyone who went in the cage wear that thing.

She was asleep. She’d be no good if she was asleep.

07.05.2040.
I visited her again today, but she was in the same state again as yesterday. So what was the point of it? I was eager for her to wake up I guess—eager for the tests to begin. Nat said she was in a cryogenic-like sleep, so she was most likely much older than she looked. I reminded her that it didn’t matter how old she was, just as long as we could get something out of her.

Still she was asleep. I waited.

07.06.2040.
She still was not awake. Damn, was I getting impatient! Most people who went in the Cage woke up during the second day. I decided she must have been incredibly traumatized before we put her in there.

07.07.2040.
Again, the woman wasn’t awake. But Nat found out some stuff about her.

“Her name is Wu Er Hua,” she told me. “She was born in Taiwan to Wu Dang Pin and an unknown father. People suspect that the father was a Mainland Chinese man, and of high status to, because he left the Wu’s with a great inheritance before he went off.”

“What about this girl—Er Hua?” I asked. “Did any of it go to her?”

“We’re not sure,” Nat replied. “We looked through her mother’s will, and there was nothing in it about Er Hua. Or a daughter for that matter.”

I didn’t reply. I only looked at the woman with a strange feeling in my gut.

07.08.2040.
Today, she finally woke up. It was odd because she showed no signs of being even the least bit tired. As if her ‘cryogenic sleep’ had peeled away years of the need for sleep. All the better for us though; we could test on her now.

“Er Hua,” Nat called into the bars of the Cage. “Hello. I am Nat.”

The woman stared at Nat with a strange curiosity, but she didn’t reply. Perhaps she forgot how to speak, I decided. I went over to the cage and looked at her. She returned the look with her own—kind of lost, kind of wanting something.

She was beginning to remember something, I could tell by that strange expression in her eyes. I think Nat could tell that too—she looked at her with the same expression. But she was not ready to say anything more, and so I left her with Nat.