The Book of Phoenix (2 page)

I'd never known any other place.
The 28th floor of Tower 7 was my home. Yesterday, I realized it was a prison, too. I probably should have suspected something. The two-hundred-year-old marble skyscraper had many dark sides to its existence and I knew most of them. There were 39 floors, and on almost every one was an abomination. I was an abomination. I'd read many books and this was clear to me. However, this building was still my home.

Home
: a. One's place of residence. Yes, it was my home.

They gave me all the 3D movies I could watch, but it was the plethora of books that did it for me. A year ago, they gave me an e-reader packed with 700,000 books of all kinds. No matter the topic, I consumed those books voraciously, working my way through over half of them. When it came to information, I was given access to anything I requested. That was part of their research. I didn't know it then, but I know it now.

Research. This was what all The Towers were about. There were seven, all in American cities, yet they were not part of the American government. Not technically. If you dug for information, you would not find one governmental connection on file.

I had access to information about all the towers, and I read extensively. However, Tower 7 was where I lived, so I studied this tower the most. They gave me many “top-secret” files on Tower 7. As I said, I was always given what I asked for; this was part of the research. But also, they did not see me as a threat, not to them. I was a perfectly contained classified “speciMen.” And for a speciMen, knowledge wasn't power.

Tower 7 was located in Times Square on the island of Manhattan, United States of America. Much of Manhattan was underwater, but geologists were sure this part of it was stable enough for Tower 7. It was in the perfect position for top surveillance and security. I'd read about each floor and some of the types of abominations found on them. I'd listened to audios of the spiritual tellings of long-dead African and Native American shamans, sorcerers and wizards. I'd read the Tanakh, the Bible, and the Koran. I studied the Buddha and meditated until I saw Krishna. And I read countless books on the sciences of the world. Carrying all this in my head, I understood abomination. I understood the purpose of Tower 7. Until yesterday.

Each tower had . . . specializations. In Tower 7, it was advanced and aggressive genetic manipulation and cloning. In Tower 7, people and creatures were invented, altered, or both. Some were deformed, some were mentally ill, some were just plain dangerous, and none were flawless. Yes, some of us were dangerous. I was dangerous.

Then there was the tower's lobby on the ground floor that projected a completely different picture. I'd never been down there but my books described it as an earthly wonderland, full of creeping vines covering the walls and small trees growing from artistically crafted holes in the floor. In the center was the main attraction. Here grew the thing that brought people from all over the world to see the famous Tower 7 Lobby (
only
the lobby; there were no tours of the rest of the building).

A hundred years ago, one of the landscapers planted a new tree in the lobby's center. On a lark, some Tower 4 scientists who were there to visit the greenhouse on the ninth floor emptied an experimental solution into the tree's pot of soil. The substance was for enhancing and speeding up arboreal growth. The tree grew and grew. In a place where people thought like normal human beings, they would have uprooted the amazing tree and placed it outdoors.

However, this was Tower 7 where boundaries were both contained and pushed. The tree grew ravenously and in a matter of weeks it reached the lobby's high ceiling. Tower 7 carpenters constructed a large hole so that it could grow through the second floor. They did the same for the third, fourth, fifth. The great tree eventually earned the name of “The Backbone” because it grew through all thirty-nine of Tower 7's floors.

 • • • 

My name is Phoenix. I was mixed, grown and finally birthed here on the 28th floor. One of my doctors said my name came from the birthplace of my egg's donor. I've looked that up; Phoenix, Arizona is the full name of the place. There's no tower there, so that's good.

However, from what I've read about the way they did things there, even the scientists who forced my existence don't know the names of donors. So, I doubt this. I think they named me Phoenix because of something else.

I was an “accelerated organism,” born two years ago. Yet I looked and physically felt like a forty-year-old woman. My doctors said the acceleration had stopped now that I was “matured.” They said I would always look about forty, even if I lived to be five hundred. To them, I was like a plant they grew for the sake of harvesting.

Who do I mean by “them,” you must wonder.
All
of THEM, the “Big Eye”— the Tower 7 scientists, lab assistants, lab technicians, doctors, administrative workers, guards, and police. We speciMen of the tower called them “Big Eye” because they watched us. All the time, they watched us, though not closely enough to realize their great error and not closely enough to prevent the inevitable.

I could read a 500-page book in two minutes. My brain absorbed the information and stories like a sponge. Up until two weeks ago, aside from mealtimes, gazing out the window, running on my treadmill, and meetings with doctors, I spent my days with my e-reader. I'd sit in my room for hours consuming words upon words that became images upon images in my head. Now they gave me paper-made books, removing the books when I finished them. I liked the e-reader more. It took up less space, I could reread things when I wanted, there was a lot more to read and the e-pages didn't smell so old and moldy.

I stared out the window watching the cars and trucks below and the other skyscrapers across from me as I touched a leaf of my hoya plant. They'd given the plant to me five days ago and already it was growing so wildly that it was creeping across my windowsill and had wrapped around the chair I'd put there. It had grown two feet overnight. I didn't think they'd noticed. No one ever said anything about it. I was so naïve then. Of course, they'd noticed. The plant was not a gesture of kindness; it was just part of the research. They'd never cared about me. But Saeed cared about me.

Saeed is dead
,
Saeed is dead, Saeed is dead
, I thought over and over, as I caressed one of my plant's leaves. I yanked, breaking the leaf off
. Saeed, my love, my only friend.
I crumpled the leaf in my restless hand; its green earthy smell might as well have been blood.

Yesterday, Saeed had seen something terrible. Not long afterwards, he'd sat across from me during dinner-hour with eyes wide like boiled eggs, unable to eat. He couldn't give me any details. He said no words could describe it. He'd only held my hand, pulling at his short dark brown beard with his other.

“What does your heart tell you about this place?” he'd earnestly asked.

I'd only shrugged, frustrated with him for not telling me what he'd seen that was so awful.

“
Behiima hamagi. Xara
,” he muttered, glaring at one of the Big Eye. He always spoke Arabic when he was angry. He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “You read all those books . . . why don't you feel rebellion in your heart? Don't you ever dream of getting out of here? Away from all the Big Eye?”

“Rebellion against whom?” I whispered, confused.

“I'd even settle for being a mild speciMen,” he muttered. “They are fucked up, but not
that
fucked up. At least the Big Eye let them go out and live normal lives like normal people.”

“Mild speciMen aren't special,” I said. “That's why the Big Eye release them out there. I'd never want that, I like who I am.”

He laughed bitterly, touched my cheek and lightly kissed me, looking deep into my eyes. Then he sat back and said, “Eat your jollof rice, Phoenix.”

I tried to get him to eat his crushed glass. This was his favorite meal and it bothered me to see him push his plate away. But he wouldn't touch it.

“I can live without it,” he said.

Before we returned to our separate quarters, he asked for my apple. I assumed he wanted to paint it; he always painted when he was depressed. I'd given it to him without a thought, and he'd slipped it into his pocket. The Big Eye allowed it, though they frowned upon taking food from the dining hall, even if you didn't plan to eat it.

His words didn't touch me until nighttime when I lay in my bed. Yes, somewhere deep deep in my psyche I
did
wish to get out of the tower and see the world, be away from the Big Eye. I
did
want to see those things that I saw in all the books I read. “Rebellion,” I whispered to myself. And the word bloomed from my lips like a flower.

 • • • 

They told me the news in the morning, during breakfast-hour. I'd been sitting alone looking around for Saeed. The others, the woman with the twisted spine who could turn her head around like an owl, the man with long-eyelashed expressive eyes who never spoke with his mouth but always had people speaking to him, the three women who all looked and sounded alike, the green-eyed idiok baboons who spoke using complex sign language, the woman whose sweater did not hide her four large breasts, the two men joined at the hip who were always randomly laughing, the woman with the lion claws and teeth, these people spoke to each other and never to me. Only Saeed, the one who was
not
of African descent (aside from the lion lady, who was Caucasian), spoke to me. Well, even the lion lady was part-African because her genes had been combined with those of a lion.

One of my doctors slid into the seat facing me. The African-looking one who wore the shiny black wig made of synthetic hair, Bumi. They always had her deal with me when I had to experience physical pain, so I guess it made sense for them to send her to break upsetting news to me, too. My entire body tightened. She touched my hand, and I pulled it away. Then she smiled sympathetically and told me a terrible thing. Saeed hadn't drawn the apple. He'd eaten it. And it killed him. My mind went to one of my books. The Bible. I was Eve and he was Adam.

I could not eat. I could not drink. I would not cry. Not in the dining hall.

 • • • 

Hours later, I was in my room lying on my bed, eyes wet, mind reeling. Saeed was dead. I had skipped lunch and dinner, but I still wasn't hungry. I was hot. The scanner on my wall would start to beep soon. Then they would come get me. For tests. I shut my eyes, squeezing out tears. They evaporated as they rolled down my hot cheeks, leaving the skin itchy with salt. “Oh God,” I moaned. The pain of losing him burned in my chest. “Saeed. What did you see?”

 • • • 

Saeed was human. More human than I. I'd met him the first day they allowed me into the dining hall with the others. I was one year old; I must have looked twenty. He was sitting alone and about to do something insane. There were many others in the room who caught my eye. The two conjoined men were laughing hard at the sight of me. The idiok baboons were jumping up and down while rapidly signing to the woman with lion claws and teeth. However, Saeed had a spoon in his hand and a bowl full of broken glass before him. I stood there staring at him as others stared at me. He dug the spoon into the chunks of glass, scooped out a spoonful and put it in his mouth. I could hear him crunching from where I stood. He smiled to himself, obviously enjoying it.

Driven by sheer curiosity, I walked over and sat across from him with my plate of spicy doro wat. He eyed me with suspicion, but he didn't seem angry or mean, at least not to the best of my limited social knowledge. I leaned forward and asked what was on my mind, “What's it like to eat that?”

He blinked, surprised. “‘What', she asks. Not ‘Why'.” He grinned. His teeth were perfect—white, shiny, and shaped like the teeth in drawings and doctored pictures in magazines. Had they removed his original teeth and replaced them with ones made of a more durable stuff? “The taste is soft and delicate as the texture is crunchy. I'm not in pain, only pleasure,” he said in a voice accented in a way that I'd never heard. But then again, the only accents I'd ever heard were from the Big Eye doctors and guards.

“Tell me more,” I said. “I like your voice.”

He'd looked at me for a long time, then he smiled and said, “Sit.”

After that, Saeed and I became close. I loved words, and he needed to spill them. He could not read, so I would tell him about what I read, at least in the hours of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Sometimes, he grumbled with annoyance when the current series of books I was reading were romance novels or what he called “woman tales,” but he couldn't have disliked them that much because he always demanded to hear these stories from beginning to end as well. “I like the sound of your voice,” he said, when I asked him why. He may have, but I believe he liked the stories, too.