The room smells of warmth, of metal, and faintly of Marit’s washing herbs. And of the nothing they hide here. Silence lies so thick it feels as if the walls themselves are holding their breath. No windows. No sound from the outside. Only the steady hum that seeps from within the walls. The ceiling gives off its own shallow breath, matte and pale.
The furnishings are stripped to the bare minimum: a white, metal-framed bed with a rigid, immaculate cover. A narrow table with space for only one. A blackless chair. Along the wall, beside the bed, tiny lights flicker in colors, distant stars caught inside a box whose purpose I cannot name.
The air is pure, yet without life. For one who orients herself by scents, this almost odorless world feels dead. No plant, no image for the eye to rest on. Perhaps this is meant to be the place I die, I think, where colors and fragrance are no longer needed.
I look down at myself. A woman told me it was necessary: a needle in my arm, tethered by a thin tube to something that belongs to this room. In the corners there is a vibration, like the pulse of a vein when pain runs through it. I sit on the bed, the blanket drawn up over my knees, and I wait. Waiting, I can do.
The door opens without a sound. Dr. Vogel enters, dressed in a garment as white as the room itself. Close behind comes an older man, tall as a bear, broad, dressed in dark clothes. He is neither hunter nor judge. More like a host who knows his guest will not stay. His name is Professor Hammlot.
“Sina,” Dr. Vogel says softly, “we’d like to speak with you.”
I nod. My body feels heavy, my skin stretched like old parchment. “I burn,” I whisper. It is as if a furnace has been set inside me.
“Your body is failing,” Hammlot says. “You feel it, don’t you?”
I do not answer, but I know he speaks the truth. Last night I dreamed not of Alina, not of Matthes or golden fields, but of the earth swallowing me whole. A place I never wish to go.
“We’d like to make you an offer,” Dr. Vogel says, settling on the edge of my bed. Her smile carries a trace of sorrow. “Once, I knew a woman who knew much of your time. She told me that in the villages, people would come to you for counsel when the winter came early, when cattle fell sick. Is that true?”
I nod, and a warm memory brushes through me. Someone holding a child. Another holding fear.
“You may know,” Hammlot says, now seated at the small table, “that you are something extraordinary. Something never achieved before. A consciousness, five hundred years old, extracted, coded, and planted into a human host. That was never the plan. We meant only to clear an archive. But someone wanted you to remain. You are an experiment, Sina. The world of great scientists will come to see you. A miracle, but one to be questioned, not worshiped.”
A chill passes through me. “What is an experiment?”
I see Dr. Vogel hesitate before she answers. “If you pluck an unknown herb, brew it into tea, and give it to someone to see whether it heals or kills, that is an experiment.”
“So you simply try out whether someone is allowed to live or must die.” The words slip out sharp before I can stop them. The fire inside me flares higher.
“Yes, among other things. There are many kinds of experiments. You weren’t planned. And yet you are here.”
I fall silent. Am I the herb? The tea? Or the one forced to drink it?
Hammlot rises. “Your host body belonged to a dying woman. With her consent, we preserved her awareness. It now rests in the quantum field.”
Too weary for questions, I understand only this: she was asked, but I was not.
Dr. Vogel turns to Hammlot. “She doesn’t understand your language. Say it differently.”
He pats my arm. “You handle this. I have an appointment.” He leaves without another word.
“What he means,” Dr. Vogel explains, “is this: Elin’s ‘I’ is sitting on a cloud now, if you will. When we die, don’t we believe we go somewhere, to heaven or to hell?”
I frown. “All souls belong to God. Why do you hold them back?”
“We’ve only done what mankind has always wanted: to remain, to endure, to outlast everything.” Her voice lowers, almost confiding, though in her eyes I see a fevered gleam that chills me. “I speak of eternal life. Not the kind religion promises. Not mysticism. Science. Crossing boundaries. Not for everyone— only for a chosen few, but enough to make a better world. People with real power, people who can keep order. That is all it takes.”
Her eyes gleam with hunger. “Your husband, Matthes… he carved for Alina, didn’t he?” I close my eyes. The image comes at once: Matthes by the riverbank, knife in hand, shaping a piece of wood. Alina barefoot beside him, her eyes wide with wonder.
“Just as he gave the wood its form, we can shape thoughts and memories. Thoughts become feelings, feelings lead to actions. And sometimes, those actions alter not just a life, but many.”
Dr. Vogel leans closer. “We can give you something no other human has ever had. Eternal life.”
I stare at her as if she has gone mad.
“At present,” she continues, “we have only a few host bodies available. Every four weeks, with each passing moon, you would receive a new one. These bodies are sick, gravely ill, but living. Your memories would remain whole. We would teach you everything this modern world has to offer. You could move freely. On an island of travelers, no one would notice if a face changes. And here, in the lab, you would have your own refuge, kitchen, bath, bedroom, living room. In return, we would monitor your brainwaves daily, along with the host body.”
I feel heat rise in me, as if I were standing at the edge of a fire. “Endure? In what? In bodies that are not mine? In a flesh that feels foreign, changing with every moon’s passing? I could watch a child be born and remain until his breath faltered as an old man. Again and again. Winter after winter. That is no life. That is the devil’s work.”
Everything inside me draws tight. What she offers does not sound like freedom, but like a chain that will never rust. I imagine myself looking into faces that no longer know me, though I still love them. Standing at bedsides, at cradles, at graves, always the same soul, always the same grief. No farewell that ever heals. No hand that stays.
Only endless years that hollow me out, drop by drop. Until nothing of me remains. Beyond my name, a place without memory. A name no one speaks anymore.
“You would never have an end,” she says softly, almost reverently.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Everything I have ever loved had an end. My parents. Matthes’ parents. Matthes. Alina. My friends and even my enemies. And you ask me to endure that again and again? To lose everyone who touches my heart, over and over? And I… I remain, trapped in bodies not created for me by God.”
I lean forward slightly, as far as my strength allows. “Do you know what it means to stay while everything around you fades? When faces you love turn to dust, while you go on breathing? It is as if you stand in a house that crumbles piece by piece, forced to witness every wall fall, every beam rot, until you are left alone in the emptiness. The heart grows heavy with names no one remembers, with voices no one hears. And the more you lose, the more you lose yourself.”
I shake my head, as firmly as I still can. “I want to remain what I am. God’s creation. With the beginning He gave me, and the end He has chosen for me.”