"Do you know what your name is?" The same question again, for the fourth time in as many hours. At least this one sounded concerned; the first person who asked her had just sounded bored, then angry. The second one made it seem like some kind of threat or something, like she was going to get in trouble if she didn't give him the answer he wanted. He kept telling her she had it wrong, but how could she not know her own name?
"Tabby," she replied, the same answer she gave to all the others. "It's short for 'Tabula'." She beamed brightly at the African-American woman in the sober burgundy pantsuit, but got only a sad, soulful look in return. Tabby wanted to lean in and give her a big hug, but for some reason everyone around here got really weird about physical affection. It was kind of sad, really.
"I see," the woman said. She had a name tag clipped to her pocket that said 'Dandridge, Ella', and Tabby wondered if they kept asking her what her name was because they needed help learning how to remember theirs. "And does the name 'Candace Bartlett' mean anything to you, Tabby? I want you to think as hard as you can and try to see if you've heard it before." She sounded so serious, like she was talking to someone who needed, like... all the hugs. All the hugs in the whole wide world.
Tabby giggled. "Sure!" she replied, her head bobbing eagerly up and down in excitement. "That was the name the man said earlier. The 'Eliot Goldstein' man. He said my fingers were named Candace!" She laughed even harder just thinking about it-everyone seemed so confused about names here! They all needed special tags on their pockets to remember theirs, and they thought that people's fingers had names all their own that you found out by smearing them with ink. It was a very silly place... but they seemed to think she was the silly one.
Judging by Ella's reaction, she definitely agreed with all the others. She let out a long, slow, deep breath that she was clearly trying very hard not to make sound like an angry sigh, and said, "But you're sure you don't know that name from anywhere else, Tabby. You haven't maybe heard someone call you that before today, or used it as a name yourself at some point?" She sounded like she was fishing for a 'yes', and Tabby almost wanted to give her one just to make her happy... but a good girl always told the truth, and Tabby was a very good girl.
So she shook her head and said, "No, 'Ella Dandridge'. My name is Tabula Rasa, and that's the only name I've ever had as long as I can remember." She tried to give Ella her best sincere look, the same expression she used when Teacher asked her questions and she had to admit that she didn't know the answers. It always seemed to make Teacher happy, and she was hoping it would have the same effect on Ella.
It didn't. "Tabby," the older woman asked, steepling her fingers together in concentration, "how far back is that?" Again that same sad, careful tone in her voice, like she expected Tabby to burst into tears the second she heard the question. Just like Eliot Goldstein toward the end-he started out really angry, but every single thing she said just seemed to make him more and more worried until he told her to sit down and watch cartoons for a little bit while he found someone else for her to talk to.
Which was all just the silliest, as far as Tabby was concerned. Even sillier than having names for their fingers, even sillier than having reminders for their names. Why would they think Tabby was sad? She couldn't remember a time when she was anything other than the happiest, most cheerful girl in the whole wide world. "Four years," she said, beaming with pride. "Ever since Teacher put me in the machine."
That seemed to make Ella really sad. Not just sad but mad-Tabby reflexively flinched away from the older woman's narrowed eyes and hunched, angry shoulders. But instead of punishing Tabby for getting it wrong, Ella only said in deceptively calm tones, "This Teacher of yours... is that Doctor Kent Habicht?" She still sounded like she was trying to put Tabby at her ease, but it felt even more forced now than ever.
Tabby had to physically make herself smile in response. "Teacher is... Teacher," she said, struggling to remain cheerful and upbeat even though she couldn't hide her nervous bewilderment at the question. "He, he made the machine that emptied all the clutter and mess out of my brain and helped me learn how to be a good girl." A thought struck her, surfacing out of the disorientation and constant confounded expectations of the last several hours of questioning. "Is... is he okay? Can I see him?"
Ella sighed heavily, like Teacher sometimes did when she asked a question too complicated to explain to her good-girl brain. "Doctor Habicht is... he's safe, Tabby." The word 'safe' felt like a piece of cloth covering up a big, unpleasant mess, but Tabby's mind was used to steering around messes like that after four years of Teacher's instruction. "But he won't be able to see you for a while. He asked us to take care of you until then."
Tabby relaxed again, tension unwinding from her muscles as she leaned back in her chair. It never even occurred to her that Ella might be anything less than honest-Teacher never lied to her in her whole life that she could recall, so why would Ella? "Okay," she said brightly, her pink cheeks once again crinkling in a cheerful grin. "Did he tell you to put clothes on me? Because I think I should take them off if he didn't tell you to tell me to put them on."
Ella's face froze in a plastic, insincere smile. "Um, yes," she said, her voice sounding artificially bright and cheerful in Tabby's ears. "He told us you need to wear clothes from now on, and that you can't, um..." Ella squirmed slightly in her seat, unable to meet Tabby's gaze. "You can't... offer yourself to anyone anymore. At least not until we've figured out what's going on with you, and what the machine did to Candace."
Tabby looked around, perplexed all over again. "The machine did something to Candace?" she asked. "Is that why you keep asking me about her? Because I don't know where she is, I promise. And I've been inside the machine every day since Teacher found me. If she was in there, I would have seen her, honest." She hoped she was making Ella happy with her answers-since they told Tabby that she couldn't do anything sexual without permission, she felt like she was deprived of her best method of pleasing people. It made her feel a little bit anxious.
