Amélie Dulay, 4th may 2049

There is more to moving an unconscious human than most people realize. Humans are lanky and cumbersome to carry. Their weight is substantial, making it very hard to lift an unconscious and therefore uncooperative person on your own, to bring them into a stable enough position to carry them in either a princess’ or a fireman's carry. There is a set of rather acrobatic maneuvers to use the momentum of what amounts to a judo move to end up in a position to lift a knocked out or injured person into a fireman’s carry. I wasn’t about to try that out with somebody heavier than myself, on an incline.

Which left me with the option of a rescue hold, putting my arms underneath the man’s armpits and using one of his underarms as a hold and stabilizer, then moving along backwards, his feet dragging on the floor. One step to make a new foothold, one heave of my full body to move the man incrementally uphill, towards the mansion, whipping up dirt and the fine dust of the fungal spores settling on exposed soil on the property.

A noise behind myself, like the wind whistling through dried reeds, but loud as though the reeds in question were full-on trees, massive, ancient, and imposing- but dead and decaying. I smelt a tick musk- like dirt and age and mycelial growth. I didn’t turn around. Do not turn around Amé. You know what that is, but it is too soon. Lots of things to do, and you are not ready. You are not worthy.

To my relief, the noise dims into imperceptibility, taking the smell, which drowned out all nuance in the olfactory landscape, with it. One part of my family’s history I didn’t need to face, just yet. An opportunity to concentrate on my current task of dragging an unconscious man along.

Doing so was not exactly elegant, but doable, if strenuous. I always relished physical labor- it held an inherent purpose beyond self-improvement, as was the case for exercise and training- and could have a meditative quality about it. There was something to the way it forced a time to be free to think, without the demon that was my workaholic nature telling me about the innumerous other things I could be doing. I had no choice but to reflect upon my situation, starting with the man whose trousers weren’t improving from being unceremoniously dragged across the dirt.

Face to face with this reminder of the past, of this place, I found myself lost in memory again. Oncle Pièrre had always insisted that we call them "l’appelè”- the called ones- rather than the much more obvious term to call them. He was right of course- an integral part of science was the elimination of observer bias; or at least mitigating its effect on the observation- and regardless of what anybody else said, my uncle was a scientist. So while myself and the other students and assistants often whisperingly called people like this man “les possedés” he was relentless in correcting us, pointing out that using a charged term like “the possessed” could influence the way we thought about these people and interpreted their actions.

Not that it didn’t seem appropriate, given the man’s current actions and demeanor. But it was through my uncles’ advocacy for good scientific practice that I had a better understanding of these people than most of my predecessors ever had. Not only the family’s fringe, outsiders like my father, but the actual core of the family- inheritors of our family’s tradition, our vocation. People like my uncle. People like… I was supposed to grow up into.

The thought was painful. My understanding was that people whose family deigns to chose their path in life often, and understandably, grow resentful. That was not what happened to me- rather than having been saddled with unreasonable expectations, I had bitten the hand that fed me, ran away from my uncle. And he had let me. We had hardly spoken. I had to be informed of his death via a godforsaken notary. Even then, the personal letter- he hadn’t told me off, hadn’t told me to grow up- he had asked me to bring his effects in order. Send them off to a university I trusted. Apologized. Of all things, apologized- to me. Included that he knew I thought he was crazy. This might have been a form of subtle manipulation, of social engineering. I usually hated this, hated lies, manipulation, deception- all the more so because I could be unparalleled at it if I so choose.

Still, in this instance, I desperately hoped, hypocritically called upon deities I did not believe in, willing it to be my uncle deliberately misleading me, to get me to do as he wished. The mere possibility that my uncle died thinking I believed he was crazy was heartbreaking. I had so often sat down to call him, tried writing a letter- only to shy away, postponed it- there was something I was trying to do, something I felt I had to do.

And now, he was gone. I still acutely felt all of the regret I felt when I first read the measly paragraph, the same letter I still carried with me. The same letter I read over and over until the paper was crumbled and dotted with concentric rings of different pigments- impromptu chromatographies, my tears separating the ink into its various constituents according to their physical characteristics.

Chromatography. One of the many, many things my uncle showed me, a neat magic trick to one barely older than a toddler, whimsical and funny but still the foundation for a scientific mind to be build, and to expand. When my parents were chaotic, driven, haunted, awful, my uncle had been steady, stalwart, safe. He had taught my so much, showed me so much, things wondrous and terrifying, and at the same time, he had an almost supernatural- considering my family, quite possibly literally so- sense for my limitations. When I got absorbed in my training and projects, too obsessed to realize my own exhaustion, driven not by him, but myself, my want to improve, to prove myself to him- he was there, with a diversion, something relaxing and entertaining, always interesting and almost always still productive, giving me inspiration for other things.

My uncle was by my side when I first reigned in my powers, and all the other mundane but still important milestones in an adolescent girl’s life. He taught me to laugh, to see myself not as the monster my parents made me feel like. While he tried to teach me morals and discipline, he also taught me when to relax, goof around, see the levity and adventure in the unknown or even the terrifying. He never got angry, not even when I acted against what he would consider morally right.

In any way that mattered, my uncle raised me, not my parents. And still, I left. Didn’t come back until it was too late. The letter arrived and broke my heart. But the worst wasn’t the letter or my missed chance at redemption. My father had always resented his brother. Had wanted to forget what oncle Pièrre was a living reminder of. Not only did he not grieve, like a decent person- he was relieved. Said that I made the right choice in “coming home back then.” He never even asked or cared why I did. I lost it then. That made it more real- that I made a decision back then my father would have made. That I betrayed my uncle. That I was like my parents.

Not for the first time in close to two decades, I not only felt shame, but self- hatred. Damn my pride, damn my past, damn common sense. What I would give to have come here, home, even a couple of weeks earlier. What wouldn’t I give? But my uncle had never been one to dwell on the past. Find the lesson, bandage the wounds, express your emotions if you feel like it, and grow, never looking back. I could steep in sorrow and anger and other unproductive things or I could rebuild, move on, starting with the things I could do. Starting by helping the unconscious man I dragged and who really appeared to grow heavier right about now.