[REND] B3. 3.4 - Daughter Duty Calls

“Erind sweetie,” Mom said, “it might not be right to call the story interesting. Well, I suppose that it is. But it’s also tragic. Very much so.”

“And very dramatic,” I said. “It can be made into a movie.”

“Oh, you and your expansive imagination,” said Mom. “I recall that your childhood dream was to be a film director. Having second thoughts about law school? Have you been watching too many movies again?"

My cheek twitched at the mention of my past. I didn’t like it being brought up because it might hint at my real self beneath the face I wore. “Not really. I’m set on being a lawyer, Mom. I barely have time nowadays for anything else with all the schoolwork.” And fighting and killing and surviving, I added in my head. “Do tell Deen how you got your eyes. She was asking me about them.” 

“I'm sorry if I’m too inquisitive, Mrs. Hartwell,” said Deen, shooting me a glare. She knew that I was using her to avoid talking about my love life. Or lack of it. She hadn’t asked me about what had happened to Mom’s eyes. “It’s rare to personally meet someone with both bionic eyes.”

“That’s expected, dear,” Mom said. “It’s only been a couple of years since affordable models have been made available for the public. Full bionic eyeballs have mostly been reserved for the military and BID.” She pointed at her eyes as her irises changed color from blue to red, then to purple. “But these are not available anywhere. A very old model from eight years ago.”

“Eight years?” Deen repeated with a gasp. “You’ve been wearing those for that long?”

Mom shook her head. “The pair is a prototype made by a dear friend of mine, Eudora, three years before I started wearing them. She was one of the top engineers of Greaves.”

“Is she no longer working for Greaves?”

“No…” Mom jiggled the ice in her glass of soft drink as she sighed. “Eudora passed away in an unfortunate accident five years ago. An explosion at one of Greaves’ plants. I was also there for an inspection when it happened.” She massaged her temple.

Deen was quick on the pick-up. “Five years ago? And you wore those… Did you lose your eyes in that accident?”

“I wasn’t near the explosion, but the blast rocked the entire plant, cascading damage everywhere. Pipes broke and sprayed out steaming chemicals. Gilbert, my supervisor, shielded me. However, droplets splashed on my eyes. Gilbert didn’t survive. I was blinded.”

Deen covered her mouth. “How awful!” She kicked me under the table. “Erind, this isn’t interesting at all.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t mean anything bad with it. Interesting can encompass many different things. I’m sure you can’t find another person with Mom’s reason for their bionic eyes. And Mom did also say that it was tragic, which it really is.”

I was envious of Mom’s backstory. It was a superhero origin setup if I’d ever seen one. Compared to my Adumbrae origin story—hang on. What happened to me was also cool, now that I’d thought about it. Getting almost killed by an Adumbrae and ended up turning into one? Okay, that was more of a villain story. Still cool. Cooler?

As a jobless eighteen-year-old with no plans for the future, the first thing that came to my mind when I heard that Mom became blind was, could she still support my useless ass? I knew that she had investments and stuff, but I didn’t know how much and how long they’d last. The second thought was that I didn’t want to take care of my blind Mom. Not that I didn’t want to make an effort as payment for raising me, but I had a knack for being irresponsible if someone depended on me. If I were blind, I also wouldn’t trust someone like me to be a caretaker.

It was an insanely huge relief when Mom called to say that she was getting bionic eyes implanted. I was eating so many tubs of chocolate ice cream, stressed at the prospect of my entire way of life crumbling, that my stomach was stretched to its maximum capacity. I should try beating my record back then.

“I hope you don’t find my daughter too weird, Deen,” Mom said, winking at me. “She was a bit odd when she was a child. For example, Erind doesn’t cry as much as other kids. Barely cries… I can’t remember Erind crying past two or three years old. She stares at people—both kids and adults—with this look that seems to be judging them.”

“Mom, don’t talk about that,” I grumbled, regretting inviting Deen over.

I should’ve expected Mom to yap about my past because Deen was a new friend. Make Deen feel like family. Mom always went all out being inclusive when I had friends over because she thought I’d have difficulties making and keeping them. Mom was way past surprised when I joined the cheerleading squad in high school.

“Oh, that’s so adorable, Mrs. Hartwell,” Deen said. “I wish I could see a picture of Erind when she was a kid. But she doesn’t keep any photo albums here.”

“When you visit our Vegas place, I can show you,” Mom said. “But that’s another one of my daughter’s quirks. Erind simply hates getting her picture taken.”

“Hate? Too strong a word, Mom,” I said, trying to downplay it. “I was just shy. Nothing more to it.”

I hated this situation. It was like parts of my face were peeled off piece by piece. The assumption for my faces was that the people I made them for didn’t know anything about me to contradict it. Mom was ruining the whole thing by telling Deen stuff that she shouldn’t know.

“You do use words oddly,” said Mom. “You might’ve said ‘hate’ but didn’t mean it. Just like how you described the Carlow Plant explosion as interesting. Erind doesn’t mean any harm, Deen. She was like that when she was a child. There was this time—”

“Mom, don’t expose me,” I said, chuckling.

But alarms were going off inside my head. Was I that transparent as a kid? Back then, I didn’t know that being different was bad. I didn’t hide behind faces. And by the time I started masking my true self, Mom and Dad already knew that I was different. I had hoped that Mom would have forgotten about it by now, but apparently not.

It shouldn’t be a problem as long as she didn’t tell others about it. At least, she dismissed it as a kid being quirky.

“We’re getting sidetracked from your story,” I added. “You were just starting about the plant explosion and your friend.”

Mom stared to the side, sighing again. “There were many casualties. Dead and injured. Despite extensive investigations, they never found the cause, ruling it an accident. It became a big issue in Ireland. Violations of safety regulations. A bit of corruption on the side.”

“I don’t remember hearing anything about it on the news,” Deen said.

As if you watch the news, I thought.

“Oh, I’m sure it was on the news here in the US,” Mom said, “but it was severely understated. Greaves flexed its muscles so that its stock price wouldn’t get spooked. Even branding it as an accident is… suspicious.” She wagged her finger at us. “Now, you didn’t hear anything from me, girls. But I don’t believe it was an accident. Carlow was top of the line, the most modern of the Greaves plants at that time. Very strict protocols. Redundancies upon redundancies. I was part of the inspection team.”

“Are you saying that it was sabotage?” Deen asked.   

“It might’ve been. Accusations were thrown around in the aftermath. Some even pointed fingers at Eudora because she was near the explosion and had vocal grievances about Greaves. I don’t buy it. Eudora may not have seen eye-to-eye with management, but that couldn’t have pushed her to cause an explosion that also killed her. We were even planning to have dinner that day.”

“I’m sorry for making you relive a terrible memory, Mrs. Hartwell,” Deen said, glancing at me. “I wouldn’t have asked if I had known.”

I widened my eyes at Deen. Was she blaming me? Better that we talk about this stuff than about dating guys. Or did she want to talk about boring topics like Mom’s work and how expensive Switzerland was? I couldn’t stand talking for the sake of talking, but I understood why it had to be done. And this topic was pretty interesting.

“Let’s just talk about your eyes, Mom,” I said. “We, uh, got sidetracked there to heavy emotional stuff.”

“Becoming blind was also emotionally stressful.” Mom closed her eyes and placed a hand over them. “Complete darkness. Erind’s voice was a source of comfort. We decided that I should have bionic eyes.”

It didn’t happen that way. I had no idea about Mom’s decision until after the operation was done.

Was this that thing where moms lie about shit to make their story sound better? When I was a kid, I’d observe the moms of other kids, and they tended to embellish their stories. Bragging purposes were there, for sure. But it wasn’t only that. Make things more dramatic or something. Making the whole bionic eye operation seem like an emotional moment between Mom and me was definitely an improvement to the truth.

Perhaps this was where I got my propensity to lie? The difference, however, between lying moms and me was that I was conscious of my lies. It was a concrete decision, even if I had no motive other than it was fun. Moms, on the other hand, didn’t seem to realize that they were rewriting history.

“Fortunately, the structures behind my eyes,” Mom continued, “nerves and such connecting to my brain, weren’t damaged. I could receive a bionic eye implant. Greaves had other bionic eye models available, but I chose this pair in memory of Eudora.

“That’s… that’s an amazing tribute to your friend, Ms. Hartwell.” Deen turned to me. “The story was interesting, after all, Erind. Minus the tragic bits.”

“Told you,” I said.

“There are parts to the story that aren’t as amazing,” said Mom. “Greaves was very concerned about using a prototype, an old one at that. It wasn’t approved by the company. No permits and the like. But I insisted upon it. I even told them that I was going to rip out the implants if they weren’t Eudora’s creations—I wasn’t going to push through with my threat if it came to it, of course.”

“They relented in the end. This fast-talking lawyer explained documents to me, waivers and so on, and had me affix my signature and thumbprint on them. If I’m not misremembering, they also recorded my meeting with the lawyer. They were deathly frightened that something would go wrong.”

“Thank goodness everything went fine,” Deen said. “If I were in your spot, I would’ve picked the implants Greaves offered. I wouldn’t choose, erm, Erind’s prototype creation, even if she were the best engineer ever. No offense, Erind.”

“Good call,” I dryly said. “I wouldn’t trust my creations either.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking back then,” Mom said, laughing. “It was an incredibly risky decision. Must’ve been the grief talking. Anyway, that’s the story of my eyes.”

We chatted about some random topics as we ate, like law school and where we’d go tomorrow. Deen tried to sneak in, asking about the features of Mom’s eyes. She was probably checking if they could detect the energy signature of her artificial Core. That was just asking for Mom to demonstrate what her bionic eye could do. Was Deen disobeying her Guardian Angel again?

I cut in, swerving the topic to something else. “Deen, how many calories do you think each wing has?”

After dinner, Deen and I moved to the living room to eat dessert. Rather, I ate the Swiss chocolate that Mom brought—no comment on the gingerbread. Deen didn’t touch any food after my comment about calories. Mom moved to my bedroom because she had another meeting.

“Guess I’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight,” I said, leaning on the armrest. Sacrifices of a dutiful daughter. Tomorrow, I’d make sure that Mom would transfer to her hotel. Maybe some comments about needing to study.

“I could stay here with you,” Deen said from the other end of the sofa.

“I won’t suffer your highness to sleep here. There’s not enough space for us. And I don’t have an extra mattress we can put on the floor.”

“What if you come with me back to my house? My sister wouldn’t mind you there. She may be out tonight, I think.”

“I’m fine here, Deen,” I said. Too much deviation from my normal day already. I’d just count on the time machine that was sleeping to bring me to the next day. Swiss chocolate kept my irritation at bay. It was super creamy, and I could taste its high quality. “You shouldn’t stay here too late. Don’t want to be sleepy while driving.”

“Fifteen more minutes,” she replied. “I like it here. What do you want to watch?” She started channel surfing, passing by a late-night news channel.

“That one!” I almost jumped off the sofa.

On screen was a massive gathering in a plaza. A rally of sorts, with people carrying placards and banners. There was a noticeable amount of yellow among them, from bands to shirts to flags. A drawing of a fist was everywhere—the logo of the Protectors of the City Movement. Right now, they were in a different city.

“They also have a branch or something at San Diego?” I wondered aloud. “They should all be hiding.”

“That man…” Deen pointed at the man in front of the crowd being interviewed by the reporter.

The caption at the bottom of the screen said ‘Auron Cohenn, PCM President’.

His appearance was far from what I imagined. He had a meek posture, almost making him invisible from the backdrop of the crowd. No aura of charisma I expected from someone controlling such a crazy group. He actually looked like an overworked scientist in a movie, figuring out how to save the world from some sci-fi disaster. Managing the PCM took its toll on him.

“What can you say about these accusations, Mr. Cohenn?” asked the reporter.

“The PCM vehemently rejects the unfounded rumors that we are conducting human experiments,” said Auron. “We are not making monsters. We are against the literal monsters sitting in positions of power! They threaten to silence us with lies!”

And the crowd roared behind him, everyone raising their fists.

(Author’s Notes: A change with the backstory of Erind’s mom. In the Prior Cycle, she wasn’t included in the accident. She willingly changed her eyes into the bionic ones, which was kind of weird given that she wasn’t a tech fanatic. We also have bits of Erind’s past shown. Thank you for your support!)