The File

by Reilly Fitzgerald

There was a file that she would not touch. It would remain open and forever accessible. She was reviewing it even now, as she ascended the hill before her. The sun was also ascending; its red glow spreading above the dark strip of land to her right and giving the ocean, the bay which stretched underneath it, the appearance of being on fire. Smoke rose from numerous locations around her, and mingled with the morning fog to enhance the eerie atmosphere this morning brought with it. She was fully aware of her surroundings, and knew what waited for her on the other side of this incline. One of her eyes cut through the mist and shadows to clearly reveal what was hidden from her other eye, the human one. She could see the bodies lying on the ground behind her. As she had passed them, she had unconsciously mapped the location and condition of each one. Some looked natural, as if they were sleeping on the occasional patches of grass that remained, while others did not look natural in any way; limbs lay in awkward positions, many limbs were missing. One man, three hundred and twenty three metres southwest of her current position, had one of his legs bent in such a way that his left foot lay next to his right elbow, and half of his face no longer existed.

She remembered when that had happened to her. She was a civilian at that time. She had crouched in the corner of her basement, hiding behind the de-humidifier for hours as she heard explosions and gun shots all around her, and the voices of the enemy, voices that did not sound any different than those of any of her friends or relatives, as they hunted for her and her neighbours. The de-humidifier would randomly cut in and out, sucking the humid air through its system of refrigerated coils and drawing moisture from the atmosphere. She did not move, even though there were times when her legs cramped and burned from her static position; she simply tightened her grip on her daughter, who maintained a similar position between her legs, and whispered softly when the machine cut in, “They won’t find us. Don’t worry. They won’t find us.” Eventually they found them, and left them for dead. Days later she regained consciousness in a military hospital and she could see much differently from one eye. They had rebuilt her. They couldn’t do anything for her daughter.

The crest of the hill was just before her now, and as she gained the top, she fell to her stomach and crawled over its rounded peak. She could hear a lone bird sing its morning song from a patch of trees that lay further down the lee side of the hill. Its song rose above the crackle of fires behind her and the drone of the motors in one of her arms and both of her legs. The low whine of the motors, which were the result of other visits to the same hospital that gave her the device to replace her eye, reminded her of the file once again. She accessed it and let its contents drift through her mind, travelling through both biological and mechanical synapses and causing a wave of agonizing memory. Having once again accessed the file, she continued on her mission.

By now the sun had also reached the top of the hill it had been climbing, and its light illuminated her view. Just below the hill was a cul-de-sac of houses-homes. They looked as if they sat in suburban slumber. The trees, shining green in the cultivated gardens, cast long shadows across the paved circle, the radiating driveways, and the back yards. They were the homes of the enemy. She had to do what she had been instructed to do, so she moved with stealth toward the nearest home.

Her left hand, mechanically enhanced, made short and quiet work of the devices that would keep her from entry. She knew that she had done this type of thing before, but she had been selective in her memories. The mechanical part of her could easily dispose of any memories that anyone who was fully human would have no choice but retain. She climbed the stairs inside the home, her metallic feet so finely tuned that they made insubstantial sound, and turned to move down the hallway which lead to the bedrooms. She opened the first door. The room was full of stuffed animals, and other toys, scattered about the floor and across the frilled bed cover. There was no one in the room. Her mind raced; the file was open and doing its job, causing the human part of her brain to contradict the workings of her mechanical parts. Causing her to suffer.

She continued down the hall. She could hear them now; amplified hearing registered the sounds.

She worked harder to access the file, fighting her non-human parts, and its contents brought her back in time. She was entering a home, not unlike the one she now walked through. It was the home of a high-ranking enemy officer. Her first real mission after joining the military ranks. Her first mission to revenge the death of her daughter and make someone pay for making her what she had become. She could see the pictures of his family which adorned the walls. There he was, inside the framed image, dressed in the regalia of an officer, standing tall next to his wife and behind two children: a young boy with sandy hair and a lopsided grin, and a younger girl with green eyes and dark pig-tails. She infiltrated their home and found them hiding in the garage, behind a poorly-constructed hideaway of patio furniture. He was not there. This was the file she refused to delete. This was the file that she knew she must continue to access, so that she could remain human, so that she could suffer. A memory over which she could lament and agonize each day. The final images in her precious file are of the woman and her children, lying among the scattered and blood-splattered patio furniture, like rag dolls that had been the play toys of a pack of pit-bull terriers.

She reached for the handle of the bedroom door. “Don’t worry. They won’t find us,” she heard a female voice whisper. She opened it and saw a woman and her daughter knelt together on the bed, with the covers pulled up to their necks. They looked terrified. From down in the basement a de-humidifier cut in.

She stepped out the front door of the home and made her way across the freshly-cut lawn, avoiding stepping on the flowers that were in full bloom bordering the driveway. She could not remember what had happened in the home she had just left. She had deleted the files which contained those images and sounds. As she reached the front door of the next home, she however began to once again access the file that would remain open and forever accessible.