The Geneticist

IT is night time. Nothing can be seen or heard, it is just black. A siren fades in slowly and quietly, before fading out again, as if it was never there in the first place. Simply a ghost.1

A flash of bright lights – in yellows, reds and oranges – and loud inaudible noise takes its place, and then nothing again but darkness and silence.2

A slight groan is heard, as the young woman suffering from this darkness stirs slightly. The distant voice, in a memory soon becoming long forgotten, echoes in the back of her mind. Stirring slightly more, the girl begins the process of regaining consciousness. Louder sirens blaze in the near distance, brighter lights flood her semi-open eyes as she peers hazily upwards from the cold hard cobblestone street she lay upon. Neon character signs light the side of a brick building, but her eyes are not able to adjust to properly see them. Chinese lanterns crisscross between the two buildings that form the walls of a dirty and secluded alleyway. Taking in too much of the harsh reality, she closes her eyes again and welcomes the darkness.3

The voice mumbles again in the background of her mind, repeating their part in a conversation she is trying to remember.4

*The voice talks clearly from a cold and bleak cement-sheet room,
with no furnishings to speak of. The figure of an older man – who
owns the voice – is hazy and unrecognisable, as are the other
figures in the room. The man is talking to them, as they stand
motionless in a perfect line, dressed in grey camouflage uniforms.*5

Chinese neon signs burn into the girls opened eyes as she again attempts to adjust, before losing herself to another memory.6

*A girl, with naturally golden skin, long dark hair that hangs in
both waves and curls, and vibrant blue eyes, dressed in the same
grey military pants, with a black singlet and bare feet, runs down
a corridor.*7

In her feeble attempts to both regain consciousness and ascertain the memory before it fades completely, the girl begins to lose herself in an alternation of reality and anamnesis. 8

Alternating faster and faster between the memory of the girl running down a hall, and the place where she now lay, an intense realisation of pain suddenly jolts her from her unconscious state to snap upright and fully alert in the middle of a dank alleyway on the outskirts of a major city.9

Regaining her senses, the girl from the hallway memory now observes her surroundings with a mixture of confusion and panic. Badly bruised, bleeding from a large cut on her shoulder and a gash on her forehead just below the hairline, and covered in blood that isn’t hers, mixed in with soot, grime and sweat, she finally loses the last memory she has of running for her life.10