In human terms, Melissa is my daughter, and I know she sees me as her mother, however intrigued she might be as to who I really am, and from where. Her memories stop at that fatal day when she decided to go out, and try to forget, for a while, all her anguish about him, her lost love. She’d feared staying at home, alone, surrounded by her grief. Instead she met her death.

 She has no recollection of the circumstances: there is a huge blank gap preceding her being born again. As I told you, she is not the perfect replica of her old self. She is Melissa by all accounts, but the little spark that animated the young woman of thirty years ago is not there. “We” – my folks – have not yet elucidated what is missing, despite our superior biology and mathematics. 

I have been extremely careful not to frighten her, even the start. When she was still a little one, especially then, she was literally surrounded with care and affection, as far as “we” could simulate. Later, when she grew up, I was the calm influence, the plump little woman with thick glasses on, her teacher. But she was never wild, the way young humans can be. Her memories were intact, although her sense of location was a little uncertain. She always refused to go back “there,” where they – she and Julian – had lived. Only Julian could drag her back.

Even now, with all her trust in me, she is fearful: despite my efforts, and all that science, her life is a struggle. Yet she lives, and I know she can be happy. Helping her to trace Julian, and then making sure she got some sort of message to him, was easy from – shall we say –  a “technical” point of view, but psychologically, it was somewhat beyond my own experience. I found difficult not to dictate to her, not to be intrusive, not to take an abusive advantage of our endless superiority. “We” are not gods. But we, too, are still learning.

Picture: Casey Baugh

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