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  “After your junior year, one of you will be dropped out.

  “Of the two that are left, only one will graduate. Only those who graduate will be free to return to civilian life. All those who are dropped will be sent to our sister institution.” He looks at us all. Yes, we all know what that means. “We do not take our talents lightly. They are new, few, and far between. So far. We must learn to police ourselves and behave responsibly before the government sees fit to step in any more than they have and police us.”

  He looks at us all. “Good luck to all of you.” He leans back. “Now, to your first lesson.”

  I am way over my head here.

  “In this class, in our profession, we deal with truth. The whole truth.” Professor Parks is only ten years older than I am. I’m ten yards away from her and I can sense her strength. Jeez.

  “During your first year here,” she continues, “you will become intimate with each of your fellow students. I am not talking about physical intimacy. I am talking about a greater intimacy. You’re going to let each of your fellow students into your head. For an entire year. You will analyze each other to the core. You will bore out the truth. You will touch on complexes, truths, hates, fears, loves, and secrets. And you will have to share everything that’s in your mind or you will be kicked out of the Academy.

  “There will be no running from the truth here. There will be no hiding the truth. There will be no secrets.

  “It will be the hardest thing you have ever done. It is the most basic act we require of you.

  “In being truthful with others, you will be forced to be truthful with yourselves.”

  I’ve only known these people for three hours, and I already know one’s a whore, one’s a gasbag, one’s socially inept, and I don’t know anything, yet, about the other two except that they scare the daylights out of me.

  They’re going to know this.

  They’ve already judged me.

  Freshmen get the sleazy duties. Each student, in his or her own turn, went into the office and came out looking as if someone had just pulled their teeth.

  I’m the last one. I go in.

  A black-haired Adonis sits behind a table. He’s probably a senior. “Alexandra Watson?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re….” He looks closely at his list. “Ah.” He raises his eyes from the list and looks at me. “You’re in the morgue.”

  I swear my brain freezes for a second. “What? I’m sorry, what?”

  He just looks at me. He knows I didn’t mishear. My vision becomes spotty. “The morgue? But this is an academy. It’s an academy for psy—”

  “We have a morgue,” he cuts me off quickly. “People have been donating their bodies to science for decades. We’re a new science. People advance scientific knowledge by donating their bodies to us.”

  “But what good is a—”

  “You can still read a man’s mind after he’s dead.”

  “What!”

  At least for a while. Doctors autopsy bodies. We autopsy personalities. For our own safety as well as for the safety of innocent bystanders, the Academy is maintained by as few people as possible. We all have to chip in. We all have to pull our shifts at the morgue. I did it. Everyone in your class will do it. Right now, you’re doing it. You will report there now. Three floors down.”

  “There are five horizontal refrigerators for five bodies. At the best of times we only get one, so there’s no danger of us being overbooked.”

  The woman briefing me hates the way I look, and she doesn’t mind beaming that emotion at me while she talks.

  “You get a body, you get it off the gurney, you put it in the fridge. Okay so far? Great. If someone wants to use the body, you pull it out … like so. When people are done with it, you put it back, make sure this door is closed … see? Then you leave the room and lock it. Understood?”

  I nod.

  “The room temperature must always be kept at ten degrees Celsius or bad things happen to the bodies. It must be kept at that temperature even when the freezers are empty, in case a body comes in. This is the keypad responsible for this.

  “You are accountable for this room. You are responsible for anything that happens to it even when there are no bodies in it. Times like right now, when we have no bodies—which is most of the time—you keep the room clean, you keep the temperature steady, and you let no one in. Someone comes in and does something—even if someone breaks in—it’s your responsibility.

  “When there’s a body here, this is what you do. If anyone wants use of the body, if a class comes in, they need permission from you. They need you to open the doors for them and to roll the body from the fridge to this room. Only the dean has the other key, and he makes it a point to never use it.

  “You watch the class come in, you watch them leave. Anything happens to the body or the room, it’s your responsibility and your ass. There are no set hours in which you’re supposed to be here. Just make sure you maintain this place. Is everything understood?” She smiles at me when she asks, but I clearly hear the word bitch in my head. My god, she’s good. She’s not even near me.

  “Yes,” I say. My voice sounds weak.

  “I’m going now. You’ll need to stay.”

  “Why? I can just lock the—”

  “We just got a call thirty minutes ago. A donor’s heading this way. Passed away this morning.”

  “What?”

  “You will wait here till the ambulance comes. The man will come and give you papers to sign. You will sign all the papers. And I do mean all of them. The man will leave. You will put the body in the fridge, and then you will lock up. Understood?”

  I’ve been sitting in the morgue for three hours, now, waiting for the body.

  There’s been nothing. There’s no phone here. Even if I used my cell, I wouldn’t know who to call or who to ask. I don’t even know the name of the student who gave me the instructions. I sit here waiting, imagining, remembering every horror movie I’ve ever seen. I have ghosts on the brain, zombies, dead people coming back to life, dead children, animals rising from graves, knives in showers, blood spilling, curses, even my own body on the slab.

  Who would give their minds to science? Who would allow their memories, their emotions, their entire lives to be explored, raped, pillaged by total strangers? Why would anyone do that?

  The steel doors swing open, and I jump ten feet in the air.

  A fifty-something orderly wheels a body on some kind of pushcart. The body is zipped inside a black bag.

  “Special delivery,” he smiles at me.

  “I—”

  “Hey, hey,” he almost touches me. “You’re turning green. Oh, god, I love first timers. Look,” and suddenly he’s all friendly again, turning back to the body. He’s trying to tell me through his actions that there’s nothing to worry about. “I’ll show you how it’s done, so you’ll know for next time, all right? Just don’t throw up on me.” Another smile.

  I nod.

  “What you do is, you take the body out of the bag,” he unzips the entire thing, revealing a woman’s body. “You move her to this gurney.” I can’t take my eyes off her, disgusting as this is. She’s around my age. Unspoiled, naked body. Beautiful face. “Like this,” he continues. “Then you take a sheet from here, and you cover her with it.” He does so. “After all, you telepaths are going to remove the sheet to touch her, aren’t you? Then you shove her into the freezer.” He closes the freezer behind him, turns to me, and flashes his most disarming smile. “There. All done. Now sign this,” he produces a form from his shirt pocket, unfolds it, and puts it in front of me.

  It’s to acknowledge receipt. I sign the form wordlessly and get to keep a copy. I notice the name. The body is Stephanie Reynolds.

  “Excellent,” he repockets the paper. “Now where’s your form?”

  “What?”

  “Where’s your form?”

  “I just signed it.”

  “No. Where’s your form?�
� I look at him blankly. “They told me you signed it.”

  “Signed what?” But a shiver begins to run up my spine. She had said to sign all forms, and she had enjoyed that moment in particular.

  He goes to one of the drawers, full of different forms, and pulls out one. “This. They told me you signed this.”

  I look at it. “What is it?”

  “Anyone who works here, anyone who goes to the Academy, signs this. It says you consent to donating your body to science, to this. After all, you guys need to help yourselves, don’t you? They usually send me all the paperwork a couple of weeks into the semester, once they’ve threatened you a bit. You’re going to sign it anyway. So you can sign it now, if you want.”

  This was what she’d emoted at me when she left. Perverse pleasure. And the knowledge that if I don’t do this I’m out of the Academy, looking at a forced, lifelong military career with no way back into civilian life. And I can’t afford to be …

  I don’t think my voice is even audible when I say, “I’ll wait. Thank you.”

  He shrugs. We both know I’m going to sign it eventually.

  It’s eleven p.m. when I get to my dorm room for the second time today. For the second time ever. In the morning, I had just enough time to throw my bags on the floor before I had to go to first period. The rest of the students in my class are down the hall. We each get a huge suite with a bedroom, a small living room, and a bathroom.

  I crawl onto the bed. Showering can wait. Unpacking can wait.

  I want to cry.

  Later. Later. Please. Later.

  I wake up in the middle of the night, my heart beating: I forgot to set the alarm!

  I stumble off the bed, drowsy, everything spinning.

  The light’s on. I slept in my clothes. My mouth is dry. My alarm clock is still packed.

  I need to pee. I go to the bathroom, and a glance at the mirror makes me gasp. What the—!

  My face! My face is smeared with red-and-white toothpaste!

  The door—I didn’t lock it.

  Did they touch me, even for a second? Did they invade my thoughts? Did they invade my dreams? Did they read me?

  Was it my class? The older students?

  I hate this place. I hate these people. Dammit!

  I sit on the edge of the bathtub and cry and cry and cry.

  “When we die,” Professor Bendis begins his lecture at eight on the second, “although there are no thoughts, the neural paths remain. The memories remain. Identity remains. The emotions of the past, the complexes, remain. They are all inactive. We can search them, navigate through them, without resistance from the subject. And thus we can probe and learn. Undisturbed, not afraid of harming anyone’s privacy.

  “It takes roughly seven days for the ‘mind’ or the ‘personality’ to deteriorate and disappear beyond our capability of probing it. As my own professor used to say, ‘Our personality dies seven days after our body does.’”

  He slams his hand on the podium. “There’s a fresh body in the morgue. We have less than six days to analyze the subject’s mind. Until further notice, class will be held there. Ms. Watson, you have the key on you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we shall go.”

  I open the freezer and wheel out the body.

  The class holds back a gasp. I can feel their collective need to run away.

  Professor Bendis ignores them. He walks up to the body, removes the sheet enough to reveal her face, and touches her forehead with a finger. Five seconds later, he breaks contact and looks at me.

  “Ms. Watson, do you know her name?”

  “Stephanie Reynolds, sir.”

  He nods. “Do you know her middle name?”

  I blank out. Then I see the form in my mind. The slot for middle name was empty. “No,” I say.

  “Touch her,” he says. “And tell me her middle name.”

  I come closer, standing right beside the body. Why did he have to pick me first?

  I touch her, searching.

  There’s nothing.

  I raise my eyes. “Professor Bendis, I’m not sensing any thoughts or emotions.”

  “Of course not. She’s dead, Ms. Watson. She hasn’t had a thought for approximately twenty-four hours.”

  “Then how—”

  “But the neurological patterns are there nonetheless. The memories of thoughts and emotions she’s had are still stored in the physical connections inside her brain. You have to think for her. You have to create movement. You will have to move from one pathway to another. And you will only be able to move down emotions or thoughts or memories she’s had before and that have been etched into her mind. Your movement will be through her memory.”

  Hesitating, I touch her again.

  Nothing.

  I will her thoughts to move. Nothing.

  I look at him. “But to move I have to start from someplace. There’s no place to start.”

  “To get a starting point, you have to think a thought she’d already had. You have to find a place that already exists in her memory. That’s not as difficult as it sounds. Try this. Put your finger on her, and think ‘mother.’”

  Without noticing, I think “mother” a split second before I touch her. Automatically, my mother’s image is in my head, especially the way she’s starting to look her age. I have her height, I have her build, I have her face. I know that’s what I’m going to look like when I’m old.

  And there’s an image of my mother, tired, and for the first time I can see that she’s fifty. And suddenly I understand that whenever I look at her, I see the image of who she was when I was five. I haven’t seen her real face in years.

  She’s shorter and smaller and older than I am. And worn. She’s worn. You can see the fight on her face. I don’t want people to see how hard it was to get to this place. Please don’t let me be as wrinkled—

  No, that’s not me. That was Stephanie. Stephanie’s mother. Stephanie’s thoughts. I look up at Professor Bendis. Her thoughts fade into nothing, even though I’m still touching her.

  “From there on,” Bendis says. “You move to a place that is ‘linked’ in some way to this memory. For example. You can easily move from ‘mother’ to ‘father.’”

  Mother, tired, for the first time I can see that she’s fifty—

  —Dad is fifty—

  I see his fiftieth birthday. Dad sits on the sofa, watching television, while Mom frets over the spread-out dinner table.

  I see it in his eyes. I’ve seen in it in his eyes all day. He claims he doesn’t care, but that number hits him where it hurts: he still thinks he’s young. He still thinks he’s twenty-two. Dad thinks he’s Peter Pan.

  He thinks he still looks twenty-two just because he weighs the same.

  The doorbell rings. Mom looks up—

  “From there,” Bendis continues, “you can move to ‘mother and father fighting.’”

  The doorbell rings. Mom looks up, and I can feel the pressure, the sweat. She’s not ready—

  —Mom shouting at Dad, I think—

  “It’s inconsiderate,” Mom is practically shouting.

  “But it doesn’t make any sense!” Dad’s tone becomes even calmer than it was a second ago. “I never notice if people are making a noise when they chew. You’re being unreasonable.”

  “It doesn’t matter if it makes sense to you. I find it disgusting. I find it abhorrent. That’s what I feel. You know it makes me feel bad, and you’re still doing it.”

  “But there is no reason in the world why it should bother you. You’re being hysterical for nothing.” So cool, I sense Stephanie’s thoughts, dipped in disgust. So ignorant of feelings. Why can’t he understand her? Why does he do that? Why doesn’t he understand?

  “Understand her!” Stephanie wants to shout. “Just for once, understand—”

  “From there,” the professor’s voice breaks into Stephanie’s emotions, “to ‘Will I fight like this with my husband?’”

  “I want a m
an who understands me,” Stephanie says. She’s lying on the bed—I can sense the location in her mind and feel the covers on her stomach. Margaret is lying beside her, also on the stomach, resting on her elbows. And although I didn’t pick it up from Stephanie, I can see from Margaret’s face that these two are now more or less sixteen. They’re alone in the house. I know that.

  “He has to be kind,” Stephanie goes on, and I feel in her what that emotion means, how nice it would be. “And considerate.” Yes. “And he will love me.” Yes. “And give his life for me.” Yes. I feel exactly like that.

  “From there to ‘Marriage is not for me.’” The professor’s words, although calm, land on me like a wall of bricks. Stephanie’s mind vanishes to me.

  Of course marriage is for her! I just felt it! She was ready for marriage and she was only sixteen!

  The professor is looking at me. “Problem?”

  “No.”

  “From there,” he continues, “to ‘Marriage is not for me.’”

  I close my eyes, preparing, knowing I’m looking for something that does not exist.

  “—Kind. And considerate. And he will love me—”

  —Marriage is not for me—

  “When I finally find a man, a man I’m ready to settle down with and who is ready to settle down with me, I will not let him marry me.” She’s lecturing Margaret. I can’t see the buildings, but the gyro inside all of us says that they’re at the university. This is probably a couple of years ago. “Marriage is an institution that started out in barbaric times. Women were slaves at worst and cheap labor at best. When I find a man—”

  —Did you find a man? I ask her—

  Her emotions run away from me and I lose her. She’s gone.

  It takes me a second to realize you can’t ask dead people questions. I need to find the right thought in order to—

  “You see?” The Professor notices my concentration has lapsed. “Unlike our own minds, the minds of the dead are open books. All you have to learn to do is to navigate. Do you understand, Ms. Watson?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. Then tell me her middle name.”

  I look at him and I don’t understand.

  “Her name, Ms. Watson. What is her middle name?”