From a young age, Tate Marah knew what cards she had in the hand dealt to her.
Being the daughter of real estate tycoons taught her that she needed to have certain capabilities in order to get what she wanted in the world. She knew that to get what she wanted in the world, she had to have tactics--the way her parents had tactics in finagling real estate prices. Except she was born with certain assets that enabled her to manipulate everyone around her before she was even five years of age.
One of the cards in her lucky hand was her face. When Tate looked in the mirror she knew what others saw when they gazed on her: the face of total and complete innocence. Her skin and hair were so pale that one was instantaneously reminded of a cherub. The large blue eyes that emoted so very well did nothing to help the willpower of whomever she was manipulating at the time. Who could say no to the face of a living doll?
The card which best complimented the first was her mind, which she owed in part to the nature of her parents’ work. Tate could practically see through people and know what makes them tick. This perceptiveness helped her in knowing exactly what to say to make people give her want she wanted without them even knowing Tate was the puppeteer in the whole scheme. One particular scheme she utilized whenever she was caught making some sort of mischief, mostly on her never-present parents and governess. When they first realized she was causing trouble she would look at them, being sure that her large, blue eyes were wide and beginning to glisten with tears, while her mouth was bent into a slight pout. Once Tate saw their conviction to punish her weakening, she would let flow some carefully timed tears. Of course, body language was essential in this mix. Making sure her feet were close together and her posture slightly hunched, Tate would ball her fists and hold them close together over her heart, making the picture of childish innocence that much more vivid.
Then to bring home her well-played performance she would whimper, “Do you still love me?” If the mischief was severe enough she would a slight stutter to the question. The expression on the faces of her parents and governess were the reward for her excellent acting. Rage would flood away from their faces and be replaced by sympathy, proceeding to pick her up and hug her tightly, gently whispering that of course they still loved her.
What they never realized was that Tate’s cherubic visage would warp instantly into a victorious smirk once her face was out of view.
Tate got away with it every single time. Who would ever suspect a little angel who often seemed a saint to mostly play the devil?
Another useful card in her deck was her adaptability. She was a malleable clay to the hands of her environment in order to remain on top of things and have a sense of control over the situation. Her natural acting skills allowed her to be the confident, assured girl or the shy, yet sweet-tempered child. Tate was whatever she needed to be in order to have control over everyone without them even being aware of it.
At some point in her life, she realized she was too good at manipulating people. So good that she eventually became bored of it. When this revelation happened upon her, Tate purposefully left evidence of her involvement in various childish antics. Her lies were quickly fabricated and increasingly creative. It was how she started having fun with her game again.
Even that became a bore eventually. Her parents and governess were old hat. So when she started school, she shifted her focus to her teachers, often challenging them and starting arguments which often led to a trip to the principal’s office. Tate would bend their words, make them her owns, and use them against any who challenged her.
As far as grades, of course she overachieved at first, but as with everything that eventually came easy to her, the young, restless girl grew tired of it. She only continued to have good marks for the sake of competition and to get into a good college, which she would undoubtedly do thanks to her parents’ wealth.
When she came of age to pursue the opposite sex, Tate played it as a game as well, finding the most influential, difficult, argumentative, and challenging boy she could. Then the game of subtly molding them to her liking. Once it became boring however--it always did--the flighty teenager rid them from her life, often matching them to a friend. Someone more suitable than her.
It was also during her teenage years that Tate Marah first attempted suicide. Her life was laid in front of her like some kind of fenced path, no turns, no options. All Tate wanted was to find something on which she could forever expound her endless energy. This undying need to locate something so challenging, so difficult that she couldn’t possibly overcome it in her lifetime, plagued her constantly.
In short, Tate attempted suicide because she was bored and frustrated with her own restlessness, feeling that she was too energetic to ever be happy. Pills were her chosen poison. Overdosing on her mother’s depression medication, Tate felt a sense of excitement as she awaited the effects.
The attempt was unsuccessful. Her mother had found her face down on the floor of her bedroom, unconscious. After being rushed to the hospital, the girl’s stomach was pumped, emptied of all the harmful material. Needless to say her parents were both in hysterics and found the best therapist in New York City just for their little angel. Too proud to ever accept that she needed psychological aid, Tate would turn her sessions into verbal spars, being sure that the therapist learned nothing of her. She would not disclose the details of herself to a total stranger. It was a new form of amusement in her life.
Conversations often consisted of her therapist asking how she felt.
“Hungry,” she would respond, making sure she sounded completely serious.
As if she could answer honestly anyway. Tate rarely knew what she herself felt for the frequency of changing feelings. She felt infinite and infinitesimal, full and empty, angelic and demonic.
No one could understand that about her, Tate thought. They never would. She barely understood it herself. This frustration caused her to withdraw from society. Because of her flightiness she was prone to fits of absolute recklessness, so Tate would spare her friends the possible consequences of her own discontentment.
After failing suicide via overdose, Tate decided that she would give it a second try. This time she would use something a little more direct. Once she had read about a Japanese samurai custom called seppuku: stomach-cutting. It was a part of their code of honor--to die by their own hand rather than those of their enemy. She thought it very brave and morbidly fascinating. The drama of it all intrigued her.
Of course, Tate was discovered with the knife in her hand, sweating profusely and tears streaming down her face with the blade held out in front of her, ready to plunge it into her body.
More drastic therapy sessions followed.
This was about two years before the war started and a year after she graduated high school. Living was easy before the war. So easy that it had become boring.
Tate had been alone in Rio de Janeiro on vacation, when the war started. Despite the protests of her parents, she remained in Rio, surviving and helping others do the same. With war upon them, living was difficult. To preserve humanity was her new game, and this one she wouldn’t be able to accomplish. She came to love it.
When human kind began to destroy itself, she resented it for taking away that which possessed her energy. Suicide was everywhere. People that she had helped survive had even begun to lose hope, many of them giving in before their lives could be taken by the dogs of war. Seppuku. The honorable death. Though she felt a hypocrite for it, Tate was angry with those who committed suicide. Even she could see that the human race was on a downward slope with no hope of being saved anytime soon. Fighting to live was more important now than ever.
The next thing Tate knew most of the Northern Hemisphere was essentially demolished. No cities. Nature distorted by destruction. She had heard that some of the most familiar animals, those ones that everyone had taken for granted for the longest time, were suddenly erased. It was hard to believe that there were no more bears.
Tate had been out buying food when it had happened. Out of the blue, she started to feel dizzy, lightheaded. The fruit she had been testing for firmness suddenly felt heavy and looked far away. As though her eyes had suddenly stopped working, everything went black and she felt like she was falling forever.
The next time Tate woke, she woke slowly, as though she had been sleeping in her bed as usual. At first, she had thought she was. Once her eyes were cleared of the sleepy blurriness, she realized that she was inside of a small room. Panicking, Tate sat up too quickly after waking, causing disorientation. After shaking her head to clear her mind, she observed her environment more closely.
No door, no windows. The walls a maddeningly dull pale gray. Above her, the ceiling glowed dimly, the only light in the room. It was then that she realized she was on some sort of low platform. Standing more slowly this time, she observed the platform. It was the same color as the walls and connected to the floor. She placed a hand on the nearest wall and one on the platform. The same texture was beneath her hand. Cold and smooth. Somehow strange.
A shiver ran through her, making her panic that much greater. Tate looked over the room about a hundred more times before she realized that she was unclothed.
It was the first time the question had dawned upon her. Someone must have captured her. There must have been something done to her. Where was she when she was captured? Struggling for a few seconds to recall the memory, as if dusting off an old photo, Tate saw the fruit she had held in her hand before passing out. She was getting food. All she had remembered was sudden dizziness. Why? How?
She would have felt anything penetrating her skin. The people with whom she was residing wouldn’t have drugged her food. Would they? Would they want to get rid of stubborn, relentless Tate? Resentment flooded her, and she fought the thought away. She had trusted those people. They had helped each other. Four women all together, including Tate, had organized a group to help those who needed it in anyway possible. Building new homes, cooking, scavenging for food. Whatever it took. They had been harmonious, all of them happy with each others’ presence. Each had unique strengths which contributed to the benefit of the group to create a small, but formidable community.
No, it couldn’t have been them. They were her family. It must have been airborne. A drug released into the air, but by whom?
Loneliness struck her. It had been so long since Tate had felt so vulnerable, standing bare as her day of birth in the middle of a windowless, doorless room. Even so, Tate felt eyes on her. From every direction. Someone was watching. They had to be. She searched for what felt like an eternity for a camera, a microphone--anything. They had to be watching.
Tate didn’t even know who they were. Her first thought ran to Russians, but she wasn’t so sure. Why would Russians capture her? A hostage, perhaps? It’s the only possibility of which she could think.
She walked around looking for any significant details. A vent, some kind of opening. Anything would have placated her. Tate did this for about--she wasn’t sure how long. Time had no significance in here. Nothing had significance. She was the only unique part of the room.
After occupying her mind with her trivial inspection of the room, Tate was startled out how frightened she was. Fright was the sensation she perceived first. Alone, cold, naked. Small, insignificant. Fragile. She had never felt so fragile, as though her destiny was caught up in the hands of someone other than her. In this room, this maddeningly featureless room, the only thing that could allow her any kind of power or control over the situation was her mind.
Then, blinding rage filled her. She didn’t even understand it at first. It was so powerful that it hurt her somehow. She wanted to hurt someone, something. She needed to feel in control. Needed that power so she didn’t feel so unbelievably weak.
Tate then did something she hadn’t done in years.
She cried. The violence that overwhelmed her was astonishing. She felt so ashamed. Her normally immovable self-control had been shaken. All because of this damn room.
‘No,’ Tate thought to herself as she wiped tears away from her face, standing in the center of the room. ‘Whoever has captured me. They won’t win. I can’t let them. This room won’t win. I won’t let it.’
It was a mantra for the next length of time that passed. This was a new game. Grasp your sanity and do not break down under any circumstances. No suicide this time. Like during and after the war, the challenge was to live. Tate would not bow to weakness. Her captors would not receive that satisfaction. Though she had found no signs of a camera or microphone, Tate knew there was someone there. She knew it. There must have been.
Most of her time thereafter was spent lying down on the platform, drawing images of her past to mind. Though she was never close to them, Tate fondly remembered her parents and forced herself to think of the happy moments that passed between them while together, which had been a rare occurrence. She thought fondly of the smell of her home, trying to recall every scent that she could. In her captivity, Tate mentally toured her own home, just to remember what it was like.
She remembered conversations with people to defy the loneliness that overwhelmed her at times. Sometimes Tate would fabricate stories in her mind. Just to feel like she was existing outside of this box, her only small part of the world. It wasn’t long before she began wondering whether there was a world outside of it. She had to convince herself that there was. It was one of the goals of her game. Last long enough to taste freedom again. The outside world.
For the most part her environment never changed. The only changes were the bowl of food that somehow magically appeared on her platform and the corner in which she relieved herself being magically clean.
She attributed it to the silence of her captor’s movements and a door was in the room somewhere. After she received her first meal--a gray, shapeless stew that didn’t taste bad, but instead tasted of nothing at all--Tate occupied herself with searching for a crease anywhere in the room that could possibly reveal a portal. As usual, her efforts were fruitless.
The same pattern followed for what Tate counted as twelve cycles: food, occupying herself with a random activity, drawing memories from her past or creating stories in her mind, sleep. After the twelfth cycle, Tate heard a voice. It made her heart skip a beat in fright. The only sound she had heard was that of her own poor singing voice, ensuring that she remembered her favorite songs.
Even though these people were her captors, Tate was soothed by the voice.
“Hello,” the soothing voice echoed through the room. It seemed as though it was coming from the ceiling, but she couldn’t be sure. The acoustics of the material around her were indeterminable.
After being thoroughly startled, Tate’s pale eyes darted around the room. She sat on the platform and defensively pulled her knees to her chest. Without having realized it, she had let panic contort her youthful face. Tate forced herself to relax, allowing the corners of her lips to tilt into a smirk.
“Hello to you, too,” Tate responded, keeping her voice steady.
Just as calm as before the voice asked, “What is your name?”
Levelly she retorted, “It’s rather rude to ask for a name when you haven’t given your own.”
Silence followed. Whoever it was, they didn’t want Tate to know their identity. She wondered if they would hurt her were she too sharp-tongued. Hopefully, her charm was still in working order, and more importantly, it hopefully affected her captors. Charm wouldn’t work if they were immovable. Realizing that even with the possible direness of her situation, Tate would rather them take her life than her pride. Though she had no control over her own life anymore, she had her will.
After a short time the voice spoke again.
“Where are you from?”
With all cheerfulness in her voice, she professed with a smile, “Probably the same place as you. Earth. A woman’s womb. What’s it to you anyway?”
Silence again. It seemed they didn’t like it when she asked anything of them. After another short pause, there was another question.
“How old are you?”
“Young enough.”
“That is not an answer. Please respond in the form of a number.”
“Age isn’t always judged by a number, you know?”
“What was your occupation?”
“Occupying.”
“Did you have a husband before the war?”
“Why? Interested in little ol’ me?”
These verbal sparring matches normally ended in silence on the part of her interrogators. A victory for her, albeit a small one. She could almost feel their exasperation and sincerely hoped she wasn’t just imagining it. It made her feel powerful--to have a wall separating them, yet triumphing over them all the same.
Once she entered sleep the night after her first conversation, Tate subconsciously realized that she was sleeping too long. It was as though she was trapped in some kind of hibernation. Images flew through her mind like dreams, but more vivid. Somehow frightening because if their clarity.
One day. Tate jumped out of her dreamy captivity. It was very unpleasant at first what with her heart pounding and her breathing so labored that she curled into a ball and let small waves of spasms crawl through her body. Eventually, she was able to fight them away.
When she did, Tate looked through the room again, hoping for at least a small change. Something different than the uninteresting gray of her prison. She had to do a double-take to comprehend that there was a change. A door.
Standing too quickly, she stumbled deliriously to the portal. Although disappointed at first, Tate rejoiced at the presence of a bathroom within her tiny confines. Finally, another room. No more using a corner as a restroom.
Another interrogation followed her Awakening, the term her captors used for it. They received no more information than they had the first time through. Tate Marah would not succumb to anyone. Not while she had a choice, something which she had come to value highly. For now, they couldn’t make her do anything. Not until they started threatening her, and even then, Tate would resist while she could.
Unfortunately she couldn’t resist the deep sleep that followed what felt like years of being Awake. She found that she preferred the long sleep to being Awake with her mind flying around restlessly. The abyss of madness loomed at her feet, or so she feared, and letting her mind be silent was the only way from falling into it.
This sleep, however, was noticeably longer. Tate was vaguely aware of the possibility that she had died. If she had, this couldn’t be heaven, nor was it hell. Hopefully, she was in limbo. The possibility of simply ceasing to exist haunted her.
It wasn’t until something changed that she regained any hope. She was moving or being moved. Toward heaven, she thought hopefully. There was something pacifying about the thought. Tate almost looked forward to it.
For a moment she really thought it was heaven. Light flashed to life, penetrating the skin of her closed eyelids. What did heaven look like?
Forcing her eyes to open, she instantly shouted, “Get away from me!”
The tall, broad-faced African woman backed away slightly, but not far enough for Tate.
“Who are you? What are you doing?” Tate asked.
The woman stared at her blankly and replied with a dry tone, “Trying to get you dressed. You can do it now--if you’re strong enough.”
Tate nearly sneered, but decided against it and continued dressing herself. She stared at this stranger for awhile, studying her closely. Some part of her was happy to see another human being after all that time without contact, which is why she was so agreeable. Another reason for her amiability was the power this woman seemed to emit. Not a terribly intimidating power, but a certain authority that was comforting. Tate couldn’t help but notice the difference between this woman, whose name she discovered was Lilith. She was tall, while she was short. She was dark skinned, while she was translucent. She was sturdy, while she was delicate.
Tate wasn’t surprised when her mind involuntarily began to formulate tactics to get ahead. She reasoned that so long as she wasn't dead, accepting the situation at hand would be the best choice. Lilith had told her all the reasons for Awakening her first, causing her to smirk. She had never been very subtle about her pride. Also, aligning with the right people would be the best decision right now. Lilith, seemingly in the employ of their supposedly otherworldly jailers, was the best alliance for now. This would be exciting to a point, but dangerous all the same with people Awakening. One of them could end up killing either she or Lilith. Somehow, this possibility was thrilling.
New players were joining her game.
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Melzer, Patricia. Alien Constructions. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006.
