The Impressionist

Chapter 9

She felt his gentle hands on her arms pulling her up into a standing position. The hands led her, and she follow, walking blindly as he ushered her out the door. She didn’t look up at all, just moving one foot in front of the other. She barely heard him giving the command to open another door. If she had looked up, she would have seen the spacious quarters, minimally decorated, and the cozy siting room designed for entertaining at one end of it.

She still had her hands over her non-face, her nobody’s features, hiding her lack of identity, as the hands became an arm around her shoulders and sitting her down, while still holding her, on a soft couch. He pulled her covered face into his shoulder and there they sat, him in silence and her softly crying, as she tried to get a grip on herself.

Jen had never realized how much she had depended on knowing the life history of almost everyone that she met before they even walked in a room. How many of her skills were now useless, as she walked blindly through the galaxy like everyone else?

It was interesting to her too, she tried to analyze objectively, that she had not been trying to play a character, had not even thought of it, in quite an extended period of time. She had often mused that she didn’t know how to be “herself” out in the universe… and here she was… fully herself! And apparently, “herself” was a hysterical person with wild mood emotional swings. She started laughing at herself as she wiped the tears from her face. Being Jen was harder for her than being anyone else that she’d ever played.   

She pulled away from the muscular shoulder that she was leaning on, embarrassed to see the stain of her tears on his uniform. She reluctantly looked up at his face, expecting him to be disgusted at her weakness as Mac would have been. Instead, he was staring at her with a slightly bemused smile on his face.

“I’d love to be able to know what is happening inside that head of yours,” he chuckled.

“I’d love to know that too,” Jen responded, more to herself than to him.

He stood up, towering over her. “It’s time for you to tell me what’s going on here,” he stated strongly, but not unkindly.

A tone chimed out and Connor crossed the room to a tele-screen on the wall. A picture of Dr. Tannen popped into view and Connor took his place in front of the comm devise.

 “Do you have the results Doctor?” Connor asked him.

“Yes, Captain, here are the preliminary findings.” Jen could see that the doctor’s image was now gone, but there were reports scrolling quickly across the screen. The angle distorted the words so that she could read it from this viewpoint. Then the doctor’s face appeared once again, “I think the other findings will require a face-to-face meeting. Can you make yourself available?”

“Absolutely! I will message you when I am on my way. Connor out.”

The screen went blank, but he still stood there with his back to her, deep in thought. Jen saw him draw in a breath before he turned slowly so that he was facing her again. He took his time crossing the room back to the couch and sat on the low table so that he was facing her, so close that their knees were touching. Leaning in and talking low, he asked, “who are you, lady?”

She was intensely uncomfortable. “I-I’m… I’m just Jen.”

“Okay,” he said, “Let me get this straight. As far as we can tell, Jen, and please tell me if I am wrong about this, you are a woman who doesn’t exist. We ran your fingerprints. There was no match. We ran a retinal scan too and, can you believe it? Also, no match! So, Jen, I’m going to ask you again, and this time I would like an answer, who the hell are you?”

She looked him in the eye, all emotion completely drained from her, and she told him her basic truth. “I’m nobody, Captain. I’m not listed in any record that you would be able to find. I have no name, no home, no real friends and no family. I’m not a person, okay?” Jen was starting to get worked up again by her own words. “You grabbed me off of a planet that didn’t know I was there. You could kill me, right here and now and no one would know, care, or investigate my disappearance.” Her voice was rising and tears were threatening once again. “So, you’re right, Captain. I am a woman who doesn’t exist as far as records go. You may not know who I am, but if it makes you feel any better, I don’t know who I am either.”

As Jen ran out of words, she also ran out of any energy that she had left. She was not used to feeling intense emotions, only pretending to feel them when impersonating someone else, and this rollercoaster was killing her. She felt her whole body go limp, her head slumping against the back of the couch. Everything went out of focus, her eyes swimming with tears and her mind drifting to and sifting through her entire life, trying to grab onto anything that was really “her.” She used to think that her alter ego “Jean” was mostly who she really was, but now that she had been stripped of even that, she realized that Jean had been carefully cultivated to fill in the blanks, in between her marks. Jean had her own walk, her own voice, even her own hobbies. But now, in this raw version of herself, Jen knew that it had all been a pretense at having any life outside of her life with Control.

Connor had started talking again, but when Jen looked up at him, she could see his mouth moving but heard nothing of what he said. She was in another place and time. The truth was that she had probably already said too much. She hadn’t given any information out about Control, only about herself. But if they found out, how far would the ripples go for them to erase this breech in their secrecy. Would Jen survive the cleansing? Possibly… but Connor and his crew would be in jeopardy. The whole ship might meet some deep space tragedy. Hundreds of people could die because of her inability to keep it together and stay on task and on topic.

She watched him talking at her. He seemed to just be realizing that she wasn’t listening. He looked frustrated but, Jen thought, he wasn’t threatening her or hurting her in any way. Jen breathed deep as she realized that she… she liked him. If she was someone else, she might have even hoped to have some kind of relationship with a person like this. She shook herself mentally. She shouldn’t start thinking that way. If she got out of this, she had to find a way to make him drop the whole subject of her identity and forget she ever existed. Then she would disappear into the depths of her next character. He would never see her again, or at least if he did, he wouldn’t recognize her.