These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein

Author:Izzy Wasserstein [Wasserstein, Izzy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Genetic Engineering, Lgbtq+, Transgender
ISBN: 9781616964122
Google: PRUn0AEACAAJ
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Published: 2024-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

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Turns out that being closeted is bad for you. Shocking, I know. My early adolescence is mostly dissociation, my memory not so much full of holes as it was an ocean on which a few vivid remembrances float. The face of my mother crying over some horror of the world she’d tried to shield me from. Birdsong in the mornings—there’d been birdsong, then, truly. Drinking my fill of water, clear and cold. The road thick with cars, gas and electric. Fleeing some disaster or traveling to some marvelous place. My father drilling me on some obscure scientific concepts, as if through cleverness or force of will he’d craft me into a scholar, shape me into a worthy heir. It was doomed to fail, and through the maelstrom of my memory his severe face rose, stubborn and intractable and fighting the realization that I’d never be what he wanted. He was always quietly furious. At himself. At my mother. At me, a disappointment even before I stopped pretending to be his son.

Even when I finally got clear, no end to the fragments of suffering; my father’s emotional vise-grip traded for bad nights on the street, horrors suffered and violence inflicted. Learning how to defend myself. I learned it well. At great cost. Hunted by predators, harassed and worse by cops, locked away for solicitation, which is to say being visibly trans.

I did lots of unpleasant things to earn cash for my augments, but it was better than the fog I’d had before. Not as good as estrogen, though.

I got picked up once after the memory implants. Only time I had a lawyer, a blond guy with an expensive suit, a Texas accent. He wanted to enter my implant’s stored memories into evidence, since the cops’ augments had experienced “interference.” A test case, he said. Poor guy really believed the system could be fixed. Offered his services pro bono if I gave them access to my memories, my traumas. Shit, no.

So I did the time, kept my memories private. There’s stuff in my head that only I will ever know. The point isn’t what I suffered.

It’s that some of us survive. Somehow, even now.

Way back in the mind-fog, long before the implants, someone told me dreams were part of the process of building long-term memories. Explains why a side effect of memory augments is vivid dreams. The past came clawing, its talons scratching on the insides of my eyelids.

I woke up screaming. Flailed and jammed my broken fingers against the sink. Screamed some more.

My neighbor banged furiously on the wall. In the commune, people would have come running to ensure I was safe. The pain of their absence almost as sharp as the one shooting up my arm.

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