She nods. “It was meant for you to have the fully realized version of yourself.”
“And it was the same? For all of them?”
“Yes.”
“Are they all still there?”
She doesn’t answer.
“I’m remembering,” he says. “More and more. About… before. I didn’t kill my wife. Or, I did, but only because she came at me first.”
“So you’ve said previously.”
“They wouldn’t let me testify. My attorneys. They said I came across as cold. Intimidating. Even mean. They relied on character witnesses. The chain of evidence. It didn’t work, obviously.”
“Mr. Hughes—”
“I was in the showers. Did you know that you only get to take a shower in prison every few days? Supposed to be rationing water, or some such nonsense. You don’t really think about it. The luxury of having a shower every day. It’s just something we take for granted. Get up in the morning, take a shower. Go to work. Come home. Take a shower again, if you want. Go to bed. It’s not like that in prison.”
Dr. King waits.
He says, “Over forty days and maybe my tenth, eleventh shower. The water is always lukewarm. The soap is granulated and dries out your skin. The shampoo smells like medicine. You don’t want to get that shit in your eye. It burns like nothing you’ve ever felt before.
“They came at me. I think there were four of them. One moment I was trying to get that soap off my skin, and the next I was lying on the ground, blinking through the blood running down my head. I don’t remember what they looked like. Shaved heads, maybe? Tattoos. Probably. I don’t know. I remember thinking, This is a nightmare. This whole thing is a nightmare. These months and years. I’ll wake up soon. I’ll wake up and Jenny and I won’t have gotten drunk, she won’t have gotten pregnant. We won’t have gotten married. Our daughter won’t have been born only to die. I won’t have lost my mind a little bit. Jenny won’t have lost hers completely. She won’t have attacked me. I won’t have killed her. I won’t be lying on the ground, a man I’ve never seen before reaching for my head and hissing in my ear that this was for Jenny and then smashing my head on the dirty floor of a prison shower again and again.”
“You’re awake, Greg,” she says. “This is real.”
Greg thinks, What do you know about schizophrenia?
“Oh I know,” he says with a smile. “I just wish it wasn’t.”
“We should—”
“What’s going to happen to me?”
“Pardon?”
She’s deflecting, he knows. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Do to you?” she squints. “We’re not going to do anything to you.”
“More than you already have.”
“Mr. Hughes—”
“Am I free to go?”
“Go where?”
“Anywhere.”
She frowns. “Where do you have to go?”
“Someplace that isn’t this damn room.”
She says, “You were a federal prisoner. Any assets you had were given as recompense in the civil trial. You had nothing left to your name. We took you from an understaffed hospital with subpar care and gave you a chance for something more. Technically, Mr. Hughes, you belong to Project Amorea.”
“I just want to go home,” Greg says, and he thinks it sounds like Mike.