Up the Hill
(incomplete)

When she opened her eyes, it was September again. The leaves of the tree outside her window were just beginning to turn, touched on their tips with flame as if some god had whispered to them.

She had expected to be disoriented. With a lucidity she'd never felt before, she wondered if she'd woken up before this, only to drop back into drugged and dreamless sleep. If she had, it was before the healing had completed, because the newly implanted memory banks were empty but for a still of a single leaf.

Without considering how, she pulled the image up before her new internal eyes and considered it. She didn't remember taking the picture, but it was very good. She could almost see the leaf trembling in the faint breeze. For several moments she admired the composition of the picture she didn't remember taking, until she heard the door to her small room open. Sighing softly, she closed the inner eye and focused the outer set on the tall man coming through the door.

"Jill," he greeted her calmly.

"Doctor," she returned. Consciously this time, she took another picture, delighted with the contrast of the ebon skin of his hand against the pristine white sheets of her bed. And another, of his face as he smiled at her. So many darks, she mused, had eyes that were yellowish around the edges, but his were not, though the pupils were so deeply black that she wondered how light could pass through them at all. Was it possible, she wondered in fascination, that he had no pales at all in his ancestry?

He'd been talking, and she missed it. "What?"

His laugh was warm, and she recorded it. "I said you're likely to be easily distracted for a few days, so we'll be keeping you here until you learn to concentrate again."

"Oh, yes, that's fine," she answered. "Where's Jack?"

He sat on a chair by her bed and began to do routine checks. "This isn't the vid," he chided gently. "You won't be assigned a Jack until you're ready to go up the Hill."

"I could go up the Hill this afternoon," she protested. "I feel strong enough."

"Not until your concentration comes back. It's dangerous." It came out like a routine response to an argument he'd heard hundreds of times before.

"I'm concentrating now!"

He laughed again, quickly. "All Jills can concentrate on getting up the Hill. But once you're there, what will you focus on, eh?" He grinned as she impatiently brushed this concern aside. "See? Best to give it a few days. In the meantime, we'll bring in a portable so you can download and run through the emergency drills." He felt the pulse at her throat, nodded in satisfaction, and stood to leave.

"What about some data files, then?" she wheedled.

"I'll see what I can do," he promised.

Copyright 1999 by Elizabeth L. Brooks. Not to be reprinted without written permission of the author.