Chapter 1
Clean Slate by Lola Phoenix
I’m serialising my science fiction novel here, with new chapters posted weekly.
About Clean Slate:
Clean Slate is a science fiction novel about memory, identity, and what we’re willing to sacrifice to escape our past. Lavender has what seems like a comfortable life, until everything she knows is called into question. For a more extensive description of the book, please visit the About section.
She honked the horn again, reaching over the leather interior and slumping back in the seat. Darren parked in front of a white shingled house sitting on a small green lawn with the occasional brown patch from the overabundance of Southern Californian sun and the recent lack of rain.
He said it would only be a quick visit and he knew inviting Lavender in to put up with his sister would only end in chaos. Even without her there to challenge his sister’s constant criticism, Lavender knew an argument was inevitable and beeping the horn was the easiest way to give him an excuse to leave. He’d thank her later.
Darren swung the door open sharply as he marched down the path in front of the house towards the car. His eyebrows furrowed and Lav could tell instantly what happened. The light blue front door opened for a tentative peek, but Darren was too busy tearing open the car door and shoving himself into the front seat to notice. Darren sighed as he slammed the door, gripped the wheel and shut his eyes.
“Nice visit?” Lav asked, grinning. He was pissed off, but not so pissed that he couldn’t handle a little ribbing.
He shook his head and cracked a smile, “As usual.” Darren released the break and looked in the rear-view mirror. “Let’s get out of here”.
Lav let silence hang in the air shortly while they continued down the road. Darren’s sister was a sensitive subject and she had to balance her desire to help with taking complete control over the situation in a way that would help nobody. “What did she want this time?” she asked, trying not to put an angry tone to her voice.
“This time? Oh, just three grand,” Darren said mockingly.
“Oh, three grand!” Lav mimicked, treading heavily now on the eggshells, “Well that’s no problem. We can both just dip into our trust funds and get that for her.”
“Sure, we’ve got three grand lying around. We’re exactly that kind of people,” Darren echoed.
She reached out and rubbed the centre of his back while he drove onto the freeway. Before they had met, Darren had been lending his sister money on a constant basis, until she stole his identity and opened several different credit cards in his name, racking up tens of thousands of dollars in debt. It had destroyed him to the point where, even years after it all ended, his credit rating made it more difficult for them to find places to live.
He collapsed a bit on the steering wheel as they waited at a stoplight. “When is she going to get her shit together?” he asked softly to no one in particular.
“I don’t know,” Lav said, walking again on the eggshells, “But you have to remember that none of this is your responsibility, okay? She has to fix her own shit.”
He nodded and lifted his head back toward the road. The light turned green. Lav looked down at her phone as he hit the accelerator.
“I don’t think she’ll ever--” Darren began, but stopped, as if he was on a channel and someone had suddenly changed it.
“What?” she said, looking up. Darren’s eyes were wide, but he was still looking forward at the road, gripping the steering wheel now so tight his knuckles were white.
“What happened?” she said, sitting up in the seat, “Did you see something in the road?”
“Something’s-- I... don’t-- what,” Darren sputtered. His voice was cutting in and out while his mouth moved like the signal carrying it was dropping. His entire body started flickering like a flame in a strong wind. One minute he sat in the seat, speaking, and the next minute he disappeared.
Lav couldn’t do anything but stare, her back now pressed up against the side of the car door. The car was swaying, accelerating when Darren was sitting in the seat and slowing in the small spurts he was gone. A horn blared behind them.
“Lav, I-- what’s-- going on!” Darren screamed, his eyes darting between the road and her face. “Lav!”
Then he disappeared, completely. Lav could hear her own heart beating in her ears as the car slowed to a stop. More horns and now shouts came from behind.
“Darren!?” she screamed, breaking through the paralysis. More horns echoed behind the car, another angrily swerved to the right around them, shouting obscenities as they passed. She was focusing so heavily on the empty seat in front of her, she only noticed the oncoming car from the left window when the headlights flashed in her eyes. She didn’t have time to scream.
Darren’s seat and the steering wheel crumpled under the crushing metal, throwing back Lav’s head into glass. That was the last thing she could remember for a long time.
She did not know for sure how much time had passed. But she remembered feeling trapped somewhere dark and empty. Coldness surrounded her body and she shouted out only to hear her voice echo back. She couldn’t see her hands in front of her and could barely feel her limbs as they tingled.
She moved her hands roughly around her body, trying to find something to grasp, something to feel, but she felt nothing but cold. She shouted again and again, but nothing came. She shivered. She lay in nothing, but still flat on her back somehow.
Then came visions of white walls, beeps, people in coats, and the solemn and serious faces looking down on her fading in and out of obscurity. She remembered smelling anaesthetic, cool but stale air, and the faint smell of roses. She didn’t feel pain until she opened her eyes to a blue wall, the sound of constant beeping and a deep soreness mixed with weakness ebbing through her entire body.
There was only one other time she could remember feeling this sore in her life -- after she had participated in a triathlon and had spent the day slogging through mud, pumping her feet on a bicycle a little too short for her and running as hard as she could. But there was something fundamentally different about this soreness. It ran deeper in a way she couldn’t put her finger on.
When she felt her thighs with her hands, they felt thinner. Her hands were smoother. Her hair felt longer. Everything was slightly off, but in a small way that made her feel crazy to notice it. For a moment she imagined that she had been in a coma for years. She saw her face wrinkled and old in a mirror and she could hear the beeps increasing in frequency as her heart pounded. She tried to push herself up from the bed but she was as weak as she felt, but it still caught her off guard.
The door to the room flew open and she could barely see the figure in white and blue push her body back onto the bed, whispering soothing words. “I know you probably want to get up but you’re not ready to walk yet. If you get out of bed now, you’re going to seriously hurt yourself. Please rest more for now, okay? We’ll get you out on a walk soon enough.” She did what she could to nod and the figure in white and blue disappeared. This was the next set of memories that she had, after the car and the empty space.
Time bended in on itself. Her sterile room didn’t seem to have a window so she had no idea when it was day or night. Only the change between complete darkness and the foreboding hum of the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling gave a hint. She heard whispered voices, both light and deep and felt the occasional squeeze on her hands.
After what felt like a week of languishing in this state, she couldn’t remember Darren’s full name and only remembered his face. She began to call his name out, and the figures in white and blue simply continued to hush her. They would talk about getting her up soon. Sometimes she would feel something cool in the veins of her arms and then the world would fade again into dark confusion.
Lav took a deep breath and her eyes opened. For the first time in – she didn’t know how long – she didn’t feel dizzy and confused, and nearly felt like herself. She shot up in bed like someone who thought they had left the gas on, but the dizziness resurfaced and her head swam. She groaned and felt the shifted air of someone sitting beside her.
“Don’t push yourself too hard,” they said in a light, professional voice, “One thing at a time.”
She held her head for a moment to keep it still and stop the swirling and whirling in her inner ear. When it ceased, she propped herself on the pillows in her bed and rested back on them, opening her eyes. Her vision was blurry at first, but then the figure sitting beside her began to come into focus.
“You should still feel a little bit out of it, but that should fade in time. My name is Dr. Azrael, but you can call me Eira. I use ‘she’. You go by Lavender and ‘she’, yes?”
She nodded, her eyes still focusing. Eira wore a white button up shirt with a grey skirt and blazer. She had a black clipboard and shining silver pen resting in between her long fingers. She had a French manicure and her blonde hair sat tightly against her head, pulled back into an intense and perfect bun.
“You can call me Lav,” she finally said. Her throat was sore and the words came out scratchy like steel wool.
Eira nodded. “I’m here to let you know as much as I can about your accident. You’ve had a rough time, but you’re very lucky. Most people in your state would have had several broken bones and thankfully you got away with only some head injuries and some severe bruising.”
“How long have I been here?” Lav croaked.
“One thing at a time, please. We’re going to take things slowly. Sometimes too much information at first can make things far more traumatic. I’m going to have to ask you to trust me and focus on one thing at a time. Do you think you can do that?” Eira was attempting to be comforting, Lav could tell, but she sounded robotic.
A million questions flooded Lav’s head. She wanted to know if she’d been there for weeks, if Darren had-- and then she remembered the headlights heading directly towards her, being propped against the seat, Darren disappearing into thin air. Her breath began to pick up as her heart pounded. She tried to push herself up more.
“Lavender,” Eira said loudly over the rapidly beeping machinery, “Focus on my voice, Lavender. I need you to take a deep breath and try to calm down, okay?”
Her eyes stung as tears flooded them. “I... Darren...”
“We’ll talk about Darren, I promise,” Eira said, “But if you begin to hyperventilate, we’re going to have to sedate you, so I’m going to need you to calm yourself down.”
Lav fought her instinct to scream with frustration at Eira, demanding answers. She closed her eyes and tried to practise a technique she’d learned in therapy. She focused on the sound of Eira’s voice, the rough feel of the hospital sheets below her hands, the shine of plastic on the IV, the smell of the stale air and the frankly gross taste inside of her mouth. Her breath began to slow in time with the beeps of the machine next to her.
“Thank you for calming down. I’ll go and get you something to drink,” Eira said. When she returned, she passed Lav a white small plastic cup of cold water. Lav drank it down in one gulp, not realising how thirsty she had been. The water felt soothing against her sore throat and made her breathing feel less raspy.
“Sorry,” she said after taking a deep breath.
“No need to apologise,” Eira said, “It’s expected that after such an incident you would feel disoriented. But you will have to trust us. We’ll get you feeling back to normal again. Okay? “
She nodded, handing the cup back to Eira. Lav watched as Eira walked over and refilled it in a sink in the far left of the room. There was an exactness to her that felt strange. She knew Eira was doing her best to manage the situation, but Lav knew that if she lost control, she might be sedated and she didn’t want to go back to unconsciousness again. The memory of Darren fired through her as she took the plastic cup back from Eira, drained it, took a deep breath and tried to focus on asking simple questions without breaking down. Part of Lav thought that Eira was so detached because she knew she had bad news to give her.
“What happened to me?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
“What do you remember?” Eira said.
Lav took another deep breath. “I was in the car with Darren,” she said, the memories flooding back to her as she explored them, “We had gone to his sister’s house. They had got into an argument and Darren was upset”. She looked at Eira who nodded, no expression on her face. “Then… we were driving and something weird was happening to Darren. I... I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Try your best,” Eira said.
Lav paused for a moment and then shook her head, sighing. “I don’t think you’d believe me if I did. Maybe... you said I hit my head?”
Eira leaned forward and focused on Lav’s eyes, in a way that Lav was sure was meant to be encouraging but came off far too intense. “I want you to tell me exactly what you remember, Lavender, even if you think I won’t believe you.”
“Okay… well, if I’m honest... I remember Darren disappearing and reappearing,” she said, the words feeling silly as they escaped her mouth, “I know what that sounds like but… I did hit my head.”
Eira sat back up and wrote furiously on her clipboard. “So, he was there one minute and gone the next? Inside the car?”
Lav nodded, “I know... I can’t really explain it any other way. He was just, like, there and then gone. Flickering in and out like a light.”
“And did he know this was happening to him?” Eira didn’t look up as she continued to jot notes.
“... Yeah, he did,” Lav said, staring at Eira who didn’t seem at all disturbed or put off by her recollections, “He knew that something was happening to him and he was trying to talk to me but I could barely make out what he was saying because he kept disappearing.”
Eira continued to write, still not looking up, as if she’d forgotten her attempt to be relatable and polite. “And then what happened?”
“He...” Lav said, continuing to stare at Eira, “he just disappeared and didn’t come back. And the car slowed down--”
“Nothing disappeared with him, right? The car, everything else was still there? He disappeared along with his clothes too?”
“Yes...” Lav said, slowly, “Why... why aren’t you telling me that I’m crazy?”
Eira finished writing her sentence and looked off to the left, thinking everything over. After a moment lost in her own thoughts, she looked back at Lav, as if she was a recording she’d put on pause and wanted to play again.
“Everything will be explained with time,” she smiled roughly, then, picking up the silver pen again, she continued, “But I’d like to know what happened after that, if it’s not too much trouble for you to remember, of course. We want to keep your heart rate steady”
Lav shrugged, shaking her head. “That’s it. He was just gone and then the car was slowing down and it stopped. I couldn’t move. I could hear the cars honking behind us and I just... froze. Darren was gone. And then I remember seeing the headlights from another car. I don’t know maybe the lights changed or someone wasn’t paying attention but I’m assuming we got sideswiped. I remember banging my head against the glass and then... pretty much nothing else. Then I remember being somewhere but I couldn’t feel anything. Then, I remember some of the smells here, lots of fading in and out, some voices now and then... I tried to get out of bed once but... pretty much I just woke up here.”
Eira continued to write while Lav sat watching her pale hand move across the paper systematically like a typewriter. She stopped suddenly, placing the silver pen under the thumb holding the clipboard. She got up swiftly and pushed the red button on the wall next to the door. A soft buzzing sound echoed through the room and a person in a white jacket scurried in. Eira passed them the clipboard.
“Get this to Finn immediately,” she said and they took the clipboard and rushed out.
“What is going on?” Lav asked, trying to keep a lid on her voice. She had put up with Eira’s weird behaviour long enough. If she was going to drop a bomb on her, she may as well do it right away. “Where is Darren? Tell me what happened to him.” she said firmly. Lav just wanted to get it over with.
Eira sat back in the chair, her back straight and her hands clasped together. She was trying to be relatable again. “I need to tell you what has happened to you Lavender, but I’m going to need you to try and remain as calm as possible. And I’m going to tell you that you’re probably not going to believe me when I tell you this, but it is the absolute truth.”
Lav sat with her mouth open, staring at Eira. She absolutely hated it when people insisted on her complete calmness, whether it was by telling her to calm down or approaching her like she was a bomb waiting to go off. She wanted nothing but to shout in Eira’s face. But she instead sighed heavily and acquiesced, clasping her own hands together under the sheets and mixing the sweat on both of her palms together, waiting to hear the news she knew was coming.
“You are a participant— well actually, the participant in a program called ‘Clean Slate’,” Eira said, no sign of jest or attempted social pleasantry in her face, “It is a program that myself and a few others have developed with the help of outside sources. The program is designed to give those individuals who come from… troubled backgrounds the chance to live their lives again.”
Lav was as shell-shocked leaning against the pillows of the bed as she had been leaning against the car door when Darren disappeared right in front of her eyes. She was ready to hear that Darren was dead. She was not ready to hear this. She held her mouth open, not knowing how to respond. She wanted to say that her background had been far from troubled and instead had been, or so she thought, extraordinarily unremarkable.
She’d grown up in a relatively well to do San Diego suburb. She was one of the few she knew who had a stable, loving family with two parents who loved each other very much. She knew that, being adopted, she had potentially escaped a less than ideal life, but she had been adopted as a newborn. Her mothers had taken her from the hospital and her background had been, if anything, picturesque.
“We developed Clean Slate,” Eira continued with no expression, “to allow individuals to experience a more stable childhood. At a certain point in their lives, they consent to enter into our program. They work with us to design a program embodying the type of childhood that they want and believe would be better for them with some feedback from us, of course. They enter into the program and they are essentially born again. They go through their new childhood and then when they reach the age they entered into the program, they have a choice to make--”
“I’m sorry,” Lav interrupted, finally finding her words, “Listen... I don’t know how to say this but… you must have me confused with somebody. I’m... not from a troubled background. I mean... unless you’re one of those insane Christian assholes that thinks that having two mothers somehow means I was traumatised or indoctrinated but like... my childhood was pretty normal. Boringly normal, in fact. Ma’s a real estate agent and Mam’s a doula. The biggest argument that they’ve ever had is whether to put me in mainstream or Montessori schooling. There’s been nothing troubling about my childhood, I can promise you that.”
Eira didn’t flinch or blink.
“That is the childhood that you designed for yourself as Lavender Fauna. Your given name is Naenia Wieland. You usually go by Nae. We’ve known each other for a while now. You volunteered for Clean Slate and, for the past five months, you have been reborn as Lavender Fauna and lived out your life, with the key events planned and designed by you, in the Clean Slate program.”
Lav couldn’t help it. She laughed out loud. It sounded preposterous. Was this some sort of bizarre test? A prank that Darren was playing with the hospital staff? He did like a good prank but this was a bit more in depth and beyond than his pranks usually were. And she wasn’t laughing in jest.
“I... I don’t know what to say,” Lav said, looking back up at Eira. She looked absolutely serious, with not even a hint of a crack of a smile on her face. “I can’t say that I believe you… I don’t have any memory of any of the things you’re talking about.”
Eira nodded sternly. “You wouldn’t have any memories of it. When we ran some of the tests in the IA versions of the program, we anticipated this reaction from those coming out of Clean Slate. And in our test runs, we’ve found that trying to convince individuals of the existence of the Clean Slate program, at this stage, was pointless. Instead, I’m going to walk you through what’s going to happen now, because, as I said before, you will have a choice to make. Do you understand that?”
Lav stared at Eira blinking. She supposed that they had passed the comforting stage of whatever Eira was trying to do. She sat back against the pillows on her bed throwing her arms up and shrugging. “I guess, sure. Go ahead. What’s the choice?”
Eira continued, as if she had memorised a script, “Once an individual reaches the age that they were when they entered into Clean Slate, they are pulled out of the program. They then have a series of decisions to make. At this present time, your memories of your real life as Nae have been suppressed, but they haven’t been eliminated. You can choose to restore those memories if you wish. There is a message from Nae for you regarding the nature of your original childhood and we will work with you to explore what it means to have those memories restored.”
The seriousness of Eira’s expression made fear bubble in Lav’s stomach. This was going beyond a simple prank, but there were a lot of whacky television shows out there. But this sounded so completely preposterous, it was beyond believable for a prank show. How could this be real? Her stomach loosened as she took in a breath but it still was churning painfully. She sat in the bed, letting this reality happen without an idea of how to stop it.
“There is an option, if absolutely necessary, to go back into Clean Slate and continue your life as Lavender. Obviously, we would encourage you to return to your real life as Nae, but we empower individuals to make their own choices. I’m afraid, once you’ve made this choice, it is final. In our test runs, pulling individuals in and out of the program creates too much trauma and eventually can result in psychosis. We don’t even have the ability to test what that would do to real human beings. The risk is far too great.”
Something in Lav’s brain snapped and she sat forward suddenly. Eira looked up from her clipboard.
“Wait… so... the car accident? That was you pulling me out of... whatever it’s called?”
Eira shuffled uncomfortably in her seat, looking human for the first time in their interaction. “Your car accident and what happened with Darren in the program was... an anomaly. It wasn’t something we’d anticipated and it didn’t show up in our test runs. We’re working with our engineer to figure out the cause of it so we can make sure it doesn’t happen in the future. Rest assured, though, we will be getting to the bottom of what happened there.”
That wasn’t the answer she wanted. Her brain was attempting to digest all of the information and suss out what, if any, part of it could be true. Eira looked so intently serious. Lav never thought she was an expert in analysing people, but nothing about the way the doctor had told her about this indicated any lying or any joke. The pieces were spelling something out about Darren, something she had thought she was ready to hear, but wasn’t.
“And Darren?” she said, her throat tightening, “Where is he?”
Eira let out a broken sigh, letting her professional calm break again. She avoided Lav’s intense gaze and fingered the silver pen in the clipboard. “I’m afraid,” she said, pausing to stop the shake in her voice, “that Darren is a product of the program that you created. He’s fictional. He’s not a real person or based on any real person that Nae knows.”
That feeling of grief she had felt only once before, when her grandfather had died, creeped up her chest and grabbed the centre of it in its cold grip. It was like being hollowed out from the inside, painful and deep. She shook her head without realising, rejecting it even as she knew it was true. But the idea that Darren wasn’t just dead, but that he never existed to begin with was too much. Her eyes began to sting.
Eira swallowed loudly, looking like a parent with a child who’d mounted a tantrum in the middle of a busy shopping mall. “I know this will take some difficulty in getting used to--”
“Getting used to?” she shouted back at Eira, losing control of her calm, “You’re telling me that everything I’ve ever known isn’t real. My boyfriend. The man I love. The man I’ve been with for two years, is just a figment of some... program. That’s what you’re telling me?”
Eira looked shaken, as if Lavender was not mimicking the test runs of this conversation she had rehearsed in her head, but she tried to keep her voice balanced. She swallowed. “I’m afraid so, yes. In the plans for your program, your relationship with Darren would have ended before you were pulled out. We didn’t anticipate this--”
“And my parents? All of the people I’ve ever known?” Lav shrieked, her voice growing louder and her fingertips feeling numb as she leaned forward from her pillows, “Every single one of them are basically dead?”
Eira was avoiding Lav’s eyes which only further enraged her. Eira struggled to maintain calmness and professionalism in her every word. “Well, not dead in the sense of– but… yes... I suppose that’s the way one might— unfortunately. That is part of the program and the way it is--”
“And you’re just sitting there like some cold-hearted robot telling me this?” Tears were flowing down Lav’s cheeks. Her heart was pounding so loud she couldn’t hear the beeps from the machine anymore. She didn’t actually think Eira was cold hearted or uncaring, but the way she kept avoiding her eyes and looking like an unhappy but dutiful HR employee tasked with laying someone off was royally pissing her off. This wasn’t some mishap. This was her entire life. Disappeared.
Eira squirmed again in her seat and gripped the edge of her skirt, pulling it down, trying to force her gaze kindly towards Lav, “W-When we’ve run these scenarios in the past, trying to show emotional comfort to the patient only made things worse--”
“Well, I’m not a scenario!” Lav shouted at the top of her lungs, now waving her arms, “I’m a human fucking being and you’re telling me that everyone I know is dead and that I’ve been put into some type of stupid computer program to make me have a better life! And now I’ve got to decide whether or not I want to go back to my fake life or live in the real fucking world, whatever the hell that means! What the fuck did you expect someone to feel like when you told them this? You’re telling me that none of scenarios told you that this might cause someone to freak the fuck out?”
Lav let everything come out in shouts louder than she thought she’d ever lost it before, but only because shouting distracted her from the fear rising through her body and up to her ears and the grief following closely behind. If it weren’t for her body’s weakness, she would have launched herself out of bed and onto the floor, but could only manage getting up on her knees in what she knew must’ve made her look insane.
Eira clasped her clipboard to her chest like a shield and stood, putting out a hand. “I don’t want to have to call for sedatives,” she said, voice now firm and in control even if she looked timid, “but I will if you continue to be threatening.”
Lav weakly lunged at Eira, more out of frustration and contrariness than an attack. If someone was going to call her threatening, she’d give them a reason to think so, even if that was a stupid idea. Eira shuffled back to the door towards the red button. Someone Lav didn’t recognise rushed through the door towards her and she felt a jab of pain course through her arm. She remembered screaming, probably cursing and slapping at someone, and her vision fading.
When she opened her eyes again, she saw the familiar room and the chair next to her bed, this time empty. She looked around quickly, assessing the room as much as she could. The IV was still embedded into her arm and a line went up to a bag hanging on a metal pole next to the bed. There was equipment she didn’t recognise, drawers and other storage in the wall ahead of her, a door to what looked like a bathroom on the right side and then a door on the left that she assumed led out next to the familiar red button.
Pushing the white linens off of her body, she pulled her feet around and placed them on the cold ground. They were encased in what looked like some sort of rough cloth sock, but she could still feel the coldness of the floor through them. She lifted her body slightly from the edge of the bed, testing the weight on her feet. They seemed to respond, her muscles engaged, and she took a risk and pushed herself up.
She wobbled, grabbing the metal pole next to her for balance. Her muscles were exceptionally weaker than she’d ever remembered and for a moment she stood there, wondering if it was worth trying to leave where she was. She was in a loose hospital gown that barely covered her body. She had no shoes, no money and not even a small clue about where she was. But she wanted to see something other than the room that would either prove Eira right or wrong.
She tugged at some of the sensors sticking to her chest and the machines next to her went from beeping intermittently to a solid, long tone. As she tried to shuffle towards the door, her legs barely responded to the commands of her brain and she slugged along, pushing the door open weakly. It felt like one of the heaviest things she’d ever moved.
There was only a white hallway that seemed to go on forever in both directions. She could see several doors of what she supposed were rooms. The snap of the shut door echoed behind her and she looked frantically back and forth, waiting for some sign of rushing people in white or blue clothes, coming to collect her and stab her in the arm again. But after a minute, nothing came. She turned left and continued to shuffle as much as she could, unsure of where she might go.
She creeped like a zombie, the edges of her eyes growing dark. She felt like her body was slowly melting, like ice cream into pavement on a hot day. A shout came from behind her and she turned around fast and her head swam so heavily her stomach churned. Lav saw nothing and felt her body fall into the arms of someone else before she could fight back.