Human Connections
by Kaitlin McCloughan
The Game was designed for us. For four bodies, not four people. It’s a thing of beauty when done right—the ball flying from one hand to another and another and then swish, swish, swish into three nets in quick succession. They’ve taken the Game from us, but they’ll never master it.
The man who greets me at the tournament registration desk is a quarter-person, a worm of a thing with just one skinny body. One bald head and two disgusted eyes that take me in, one body at a time. I raise my chins. They hate us for being whole.
This fragment of a man will force me to tell humiliating lies in order to compete. He knows they’re lies, but he’s trapped. If he acknowledges me to be one person with four bodies, he’s validating my existence and that of my community. If he insists on his narrow belief that I am four separate people, albeit four people mentally linked by implants in the napes of our necks, he has to let us play the Game.
“Names,” he says, landing hard on the plural like a self-satisfied snake. I speak with my bodies in order, left to right.
“Jordan Riscole,” I say through the mouth of the tall one. With the small one I say “Jane Riscole.” “Lucy Riscole” is the name I’ve given my palest body, and “Silvio Riscole” is the one with the long scar that disappears behind its beard.
“Siblings,” says the quarter-man with a smirk. It’s the common lie the people of our community tell to be allowed to compete at the highest levels of our own sport. They know it, we know it. “Two brothers, two sisters,” he says. I can’t hide the annoyance in any of my eyes.
“Yes,” all four mouths growl, and he flinches back. They hate our wholeness, and they’re also afraid of it. The man hands me four armbands with numbers, one for each body, and I enter the arena.
Descending the stairs to the players’ box, I hear the whispers of the spectators. The ears on the scarred one don’t work, but the tall one and the small one and the pale one absorb sharp words from every direction.
It’s not fair that they compete.
Freaks.
They should be ripped apart.
I’ve heard it all before. I take my place in the box with the others preparing to play in the tournament. I sit with the small one, the pale one, and the scarred one facing forward to watch the game in progress and position the tall one in the other direction to watch my backs. They want to rip me apart, after all.
I’m sitting next to another player from my community. I greet their nearest body with the voice and handshake of the scarred one. The quarter-people on the bench in front of us eye us nervously.
The game currently being played on the court is between two teams of quarter-people. Watching them is almost embarrassing. The rules of the Game require a player—or a team of four quarter-players—to toss the ball into three colored nets in the correct order. The order is indicated by a set of lights in the middle of the court, and it changes every five minutes. Currently, the order needed to score a point is red, green, blue. In a moment it might change to blue, red, green, or green, blue, red.
Eight confused bodies stumble around the field, disconnected from each other. One quarter-person manages to throw the ball through the red hoop. He looks around, wasting precious time assessing the location of his teammates. He throws the ball to a woman in front of the green hoop. She tosses the ball into the hoop, but in concentrating her only set of eyes on the ball, she misses the change in the lights.
“Wait! It’s red, blue, green now!” a teammate calls belatedly. They all sigh. Ten minutes later, the game has ended and I am called to the field. I will be playing a team of quarter-people. The expressions on their faces show they’re already prepared for defeat. They are in awe of our wholeness.
The tall one, the pale one, and the scarred one maintain poker faces. I allow the small one to smile.
A quick victory later, I go in search of food. The tournament will continue tomorrow, and now that most of the quarter-person teams have been eliminated, the competition will begin in earnest.
I need to fuel my bodies. Unfortunately, our host town is small with only a few pubs to choose from. It’s not the sort of cosmopolitan city where quarter-people politely resist the urge to gawk at members of my community. I grit my jaws and enter the quietest establishment.
It’s crowded inside, loud voices riding high on the excitement of the tournament. I spot one table still empty at the far end of the pub. Keeping my four bodies tight, I make my way across the room, looking in all directions but avoiding eye contact with everyone. After securing three seats at the table, backs to the wall, I approach the bar with my fourth body (the pale one) to buy food.
A man and a woman at a nearby table—young, quartered—pick up their bowls of stew and slide into the two empty seats at my table.
“I’m using that chair,” I tell the woman.
I quickly bring the pale one back to the table with our steaming plates of food. The man grabs an extra chair from another table before I can object, offering it to my fourth body with a smile.
“I prefer to eat alone,” I say. I say it with all my mouths, which is unnecessary, but usually scares them off.
The man takes on a more serious look as he sits back down. I sit the pale one as well.
“We’re just trying to keep you safe,” the man says. “A lot of people in here are anti-link. Violently anti-link. But they know us, they won’t try anything if we’re here.”
I’m suddenly anxious, but don’t let any face react. I eat my food in tense silence.
“That’s amazing,” says the woman. “The way all four of your hands move together with every bite. I think you’re even chewing in unison.”
“Is it difficult for you to move both of your hands at the same time?” I ask.
She laughs and changes the subject. “How long have you been playing switchball?” Her eyes roam across my faces, unsure of where to land.
“As long as I can remember,” I say. “In the community, we all play the Game.”
The woman nods. “I guess that explains why you’re all so good at it,” she says. After a moment of loudly slurping her food, she looks at the scarred one thoughtfully. “Have you always been linked together?” She makes a sweeping gesture with her hand to indicate all of my bodies.
“My bodies were young children when I was formed. When I was linked. They were incomplete, I’m not.”
The incomplete woman in front of me doesn’t seem to register the insult.
“If you’re wondering about my scars, I was in an accident years ago. Luckily, only one body was hurt.”
The woman starts to speak again but the man interrupts her.
“What about those kids?” he asks.
I put down my spoons wearily, knowing where he’s headed.
“Did they have a choice about becoming…linked? Are they still in there somewhere?”
I sigh. “Those kids, as you call them, are me. Pieces of me. They were incomplete, and when they came together, they formed something new and whole. If your child were born without a body part, would you deny him a replacement?”
“It’s not the same,” says the man.
As I’m engaging this conversation with the voice of the small one, the eyes of the scarred one scan the room. Too many unfriendly stares point my way. At the bar, the burly bartender sneers openly.
“I think I should go back to my hotel,” I say.
All my bodies stand, push in my chairs, and turn to the pub door. As I leave, it feels like there are even more eyes locked on me than before.
I step into the night, happy to be gone from the pub but still too hungry in all my stomachs to sleep soundly. There’s another place to eat down the street. It will probably be even worse than the first, but it seems like my only option.
Four hooded figures emerge from the shadows to block my path. They work together but move like quarter-people. Like a team.
Three of my bodies are easily subdued by meaty arms.
The tall one breaks free, but is quickly brought to his knees by a twist of the small one’s wrist.
Pain from every direction.
I awake to find I’m an amputee. Three bodies are lost—the tall one, the pale one, the scarred one. Only the small one left. Can I survive with only these small limbs, this small mind?
My lone body is in a hospital bed. I clutch the back of my neck, feeling bandages pasted over a hollow groove. My implant is gone, the tissue around it possibly too damaged for another. I close my eyes against the rush of tears.
A nurse enters. “You’re awake,” she says cheerfully, as if I haven’t been dismembered. Then she sees my streaked cheeks.
“You’re all right, hon,” she says. “You have some bruises and scarring from where your implant was ripped out, but it will heal up. In two to three months, you can even put an implant back in, if that’s what you want. Yours was all smashed up but I’m sure you know where to get another one. Your siblings are all doing well too. Do you want to see them?”
For a moment I don’t understand who she’s referring to. Then I remember the lie.
“The other bodies are…?” I don’t know how to finish my question. Are they alive? Are they people? Are they me?
The nurse’s face tightens. She disapproves of my terminology, but I’m too shaken to appease her by maintaining the siblings ruse.
“Your injuries were worse than theirs. I’ll take you to them.” She helps me into a wheelchair and pushes me down the hall. It’s disconcerting to only look in one direction.
“They’re all in Lucy’s room,” says the nurse, and pushes me through a door before I can recall that Lucy is the pale one.
She’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, a blanket twisted tightly in her hands. The tall one stands beside her. They both stare at me when I enter. I gawk back.
The three detached bodies still move and breathe. Seeing it gives me chills. Who are they if they’re not me? The scarred one huddles in a corner, arms around his knees, shivering more than the rest of us.
“Are you okay?” I ask him, a bizarre question for one severed limb to aim at another.
He doesn’t answer, and it occurs to me that the ears on that body haven’t worked since the accident. I turn to the tall one and the pale one, trying to verbalize a thought that they would normally think with me.
“What now?” I finally say.
“I…we…have to drop out of the tournament,” the tall one says. His voice sounds different when I’m not hearing it between that body’s ears.
“Of course,” I say. “Haven’t…we…missed the game anyway?”
“They delayed it because of us. I don’t think they did it to be nice. They would love to humiliate us. Show that we can’t play the game as quarter people.”
“We can’t,” I say.
“Why not?” says the pale one.
The tall one and I turn to her, stunned. Our mind was cleaved less than 24 hours ago, and now one piece disagrees with the others.
“We all know how to play the Game. We’re not linked anymore, but we still know each other’s minds because they’re the same. We can’t let them scare us away.”
Tournament officials pick us up from the hospital. They express sympathy, but not with much conviction. They tell us they’re happy we’re still willing to play. Three of us pretend to be happy too. The scarred one still shakes miserably, understanding nothing. We write down our plan for him to read, but his fear prevents focus.
He no longer seems like an extension of me. I’m not afraid like he is. I’m furious.
Back in the hotel room, he sits on a bed. I sit next to him and wrap my arms around his shoulders. His body is so familiar, but it’s not mine. We still cry at the same time.
The tall one is pacing.
“Has anyone tried to find out who did this to us? Do the police even care?”
At least someone else is angry.
“Did they talk to you about it? Did you give them a description of the attackers?” I ask.
“They didn’t ask. I’m not sure I got a good enough look at their faces anyway.”
“Me neither.”
We’re all silent for a moment, and then the tall one slams his hand into the wall.
The pale one puts a calming hand on his shoulder. “Jordan,” she says.
Whether she’s simply testing the idea of using his competition alias or whether she’s already accustomed to him as a separate entity with a name, I can’t tell.
“I bet I know where we could get some information on these people,” I say.
“The pub,” says the tall one immediately.
“Are you crazy?” asks the pale one. “This time they could kill us.”
“This time we’ll be prepared,” says the tall one. “We’ll bring knives. If they jump us again, at least I’ll take a few down with me.”
“What about Silvio?” asks the pale one.
Jordan reaches into a drawer and pulls out a notepad and pen. He scribbles on the paper and shows it to the scarred one, who nods vigorously.
“He’s in.”
I sleep restlessly, ever aware of the presence of three bodies that aren’t my bodies, anxious about the game and the possibility of confronting our attackers. Still, I drift off long enough for the pale one to slip out of the room without any of us noticing.
Good luck at the pub. I’ll see you at the arena gates before the game. Love, Lucy says her note.
As we approach the pub, walking along the same street on which we fell and were broken, my heart pounds and my hands sweat. I turn to the tall one, whom I’m still trying to think of as Jordan. His mouth tightens grimly.
“Yeah, I know,” he says, our minds still in sync. The scarred one squeezes my shoulder.
The pub is full of boisterous quarter-people, drinking and laughing. As we enter, the voices slow. Glasses clink on tables. Chairs screech as the people turn their attention to us three. At least two dozen different minds control the bodies at the pub. How do they have such a singular focus?
Jordan approaches the bar with bold strides and slides onto a stool, beckoning the bartender. The bartender, the same rough man from the other night, saunters over, wiping his hands with a rag that he throws right in front of Jordan.
“Remember me?” Jordan asks.
“Sure, I remember you,” says the bartender with a smirk. “Weren’t there four of you?”
“There was one of me,” says Jordan. The bartender glances over Jordan’s shoulder. I notice two large quarter-men stand, ready to do some unspoken bidding. I speak up.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” I say, forgetting that we’re a we. “I’ll leave you alone. I just want information on who jumped me the other night. Do you know anything?”
“No, I don’t know anything about that,” says the bartender. Then he looks back at Jordan. “If the cops were to ask me, I would tell them that I have no idea about any jumping at all. But—and I’m just speculating here—if something like that happened, I imagine a lot of people wouldn’t be too ashamed to have been a part of it.” Before either of us can respond, a customer calls him away.
Jordan takes out the notepad and scrawls a note. He shows it to me without changing expression.
Knives won’t be enough it says. I nod.
Jordan shows the same note to the scarred one, who takes the pen and writes back. We need a strategy for the game he writes.
“Where is, um, Lucy?” I ask. “She’s supposed to meet us here.”
We scan the crowd outside the arena. The scarred one points.
“There!” he says.
I’m relieved to finally hear his voice.
The pale one is approaching us, smiling, laughing, talking. Next to her is the man we met in the pub the night of the attack. The one who tried to protect us. He’s laughing too. She sees us and waves.
“Hey everyone! Jeff was showing me around. We never see any sights during our competitions. Did you know that this town has the largest collection of glass bird figurines in the country? Anyway, should we warm up for the game?”
I stare at her. Already she’s had an experience that I won’t have. Already our minds are drifting. She is not me. If we were relinked, how would we account for the divergence? Would one of our minds stomp the other down? I wouldn’t care to lose myself to her.
“I’ll let you get to it then,” says Jeff. “Good luck, Lucy!”
We have to check in at the front gate. The man who takes our information is the bald-headed quarter-person from registration. His face has the same disgusted curl. I’m the same as he is now, other than a dent in the back of my neck, but my amputation hasn’t dissolved his loathing.
Right before we enter the court, we stop in unison and form a circle. Without the need for words between us, we take two deep breaths, as I’ve always done before the Game.
“We’ve got this,” says Jordan. I look into the eyes of my former bodies. My teammates. It occurs to me that every other time I’ve entered a court to play the Game, I’ve entered alone.
Our opponent is a member of the community. Four-bodied. We each take a body to guard. I’m assigned to the smallest, of course.
“I’m so sorry to hear about your injury,” that body says just before the ball shoots out of the floor and the game begins.
We hold our own, at first. We’ve each retained our skill in handling the ball and dodging our opponent. Jordan makes two baskets, blue and green, before the opponent can score any.
Next in line is red, but Silvio is distracted by our opponent’s fattest body and doesn’t realize the ball is being passed to him. The fat body snatches it and passes it to another body. That body tosses the ball into the blue basket. A few moments later, the opponent has their first point.
Our performance gets shakier as we lose confidence. The opponent scores a second point when I throw a ball to Lucy and she fails to see a body coming up behind her to snatch it. I realize too late that I should have called out a warning. I forgot that she couldn’t see what I could see.
“One more point and they win,” says Lucy.
The colors are red, blue, green. We sink red, and blue. I intercept a pass between the opponent and race toward the green basket. Two opponent bodies converge over my small one.
In a flash, the ball is taken from my hands. It’s the scarred one. Silvio. He throws it to Lucy, who’s right behind the opponent’s taller body. Before any of us can react, she lobs it back at him and he slips it neatly into the green net. I hadn’t seen that play coming. We’ve scored our first point.
And our last. Our opponent wins a moment later, but Silvio still holds onto a small smile. We can play the Game.
We stand in a line, chests heaving, facing the spectators. They hate us, whole or not, but it doesn’t matter. We can still play, and next time the four of us will play better. When we link hands, the warmth I feel is something one limb doesn’t feel for another. We raise our arms with pride.
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Kaitlin McCloughan’s work has appeared in Metaphorosis, Bastion Science Fiction, and Triangulation: Parch.