Chrysalis in Sunlight Read online

  “She has basic language and motor skills, as you saw, but she doesn’t appear to remember details about her life or the world. I thought your presence might trigger her recall, but…”

  I turned around, leaning my back against the car. “Her memories will come back, though, right?”

  “We don’t know. Erin, she’s the first person to emerge from the chrysalis. We think the direct sunlight may have accelerated the process. But if the cell regeneration occurred in her brain too, all her synaptic pathways may have been rewritten.”

  “So she’s not even herself anymore.”

  Dr. Acacia didn’t reply. The aliens had taken everyone from me now. She was still here, but without the experiences that had shaped who she was, without our shared past, she would be someone different. There was so much I had never asked, so many stories now unrecoverable. I would never know what had happened with the goat, I would never hear all the war stories I’d been waiting to ask her about, waiting until she’d...healed.

  I had always depended on others to be the storytellers—Aunt Melissa, my father, my grandmother: they had all told their stories to me, and I had received them gratefully, but rarely given any back. Now I would have to tell them to her, decide which parts to include, which parts to leave out, how to paint the life and history she didn’t remember. How to decide which parts I wanted her to know. But hearing the stories isn’t the same as living through them, and unless her memories returned, telling them to her wouldn’t recreate who she’d been.

  I wanted her back—I wanted them all back—but I knew that this was a good thing for her. She’d finally found that miracle cure she’d been looking for. Perhaps with all her physical and emotional pains forgotten, the war could truly be over for her.

  “Can I take her home?” I stared straight ahead.

  Dr. Acacia studied my face. “We need to do some tests at the EERF, but after that, if nothing else changes, you should be able to take her back to Denver and check in with us regularly the way you have been.”

  “Okay,” I nearly whispered.

  They loaded her into the helicopter, and it thunked noisily into the western sky. I slid behind the wheel of the car. It had a full charge now from sitting out in the sun for half a day. The computer showed the route and the time left to San Diego, only a few hours to go.

  I started the engine and pulled onto the long, empty road. A few hours before I could rendezvous with them at the EERF. A few hours to be utterly alone with my grief. Not enough time to mourn what I had lost, but I wanted to do my best once I met up with Melissa—the new Melissa—to leave the past behind and move forward together.

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  Copyright 2018 Sarena Ulibarri

  Sarena Ulibarri is a graduate of the Clarion Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers Workshop at UCSD, and earned an MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Weirdbook, and elsewhere. She edited the anthology Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers, and manages World Weaver Press. Find more at SarenaUlibarri.com, or on Twitter @SarenaUlibarri.

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  Giganotosaurus is published monthly by Late Cretaceous and edited by Rashida J. Smith.

  http://giganotosaurus.org

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