This isn’t my first experience with a therapist, though back on Earth, if I saw anyone at all, it was usually a trainee practicing for a steep discount out of a local street clinic. I went through some very stressful periods back in LA. There were years of fallout from that one mistake in the rusty old Santiago factory, with me in and out of hospitals for follow-up surgeries. It put a huge pressure on the household. Ultimately that led to me legally emancipating myself from my mom and taking all my medical debt with me. I had such a history of absenteeism from school that probably no one even noticed when I dropped out completely at sixteen.
Those therapists helped me a lot, don’t get me wrong. Chiron isn’t the first place I’ve had anxiety attacks, and I learned some ways to cope with them. But talking with Sam is literally worlds away from that. It’s not even that she necessarily says anything insightful, it’s just that the questions she asks draw together a lot of loose threads. I’ve been transferring so much onto Marina; my anxieties related to Dr. Gupta have found an outlet in my friend. When I review the last few days, it all makes sense. Dr. Citali trained in that lab—she’s part of that scientific lineage, she’s got some qualities in common with Dr. Gupta, and I’ve been justifying my behavior with this excuse that she’s into me in a way I don’t reciprocate. Marina was such an easy target for my anger and irritation. The fact that I’ve been snapping at her is as clear a sign that something is wrong as my breakdown at the temple. Talking it all through with Sam helps me piece these things together.
There’s also that tension between not wanting to feel alone and abandoned and also wanting the freedom of self-determination. Just getting here was all that in a nutshell—the annoyance that Cleve might not let me go out alone followed by a flash of terror at another potential pheromone attack. Marina’s being overprotective, too, and it’s stifling. I don’t want Dr. Gupta’s actions to take away my own freedom to live my life as I please.
“You’ve mentioned feeling alone,” Sam says after I’ve told her about all that and my anxiety attack with the cultists. “And you’ve mentioned that this cult seems to see you as an icon. What do you think you could offer to them, in terms of leadership or help?”
“I’m not looking to undermine Sal, but I’m also in a unique position to understand what this cult is based on. I don’t doubt that Sal has had visions; I’ve seen and sensed similar things, and I believe they have a basis in reality. But Sal has applied a level of interpretation on top of that which is entirely from them. Perspective, that’s what I can offer.” Sam prompts me along with various mmhmm sounds, but she doesn’t interrupt, allowing me to reflect further.
After a moment of thoughtful consideration, I add, “And also, I think there’s a lack of awareness in Stepdaughters of Chiron society of the level to which the planet might permeate people. Sal is probably not unique. There could be people who just think they have trippy dreams. There could be people who, like me, can kind of sense the pheromone stuff. But they just dismiss it, or think it’s something strange without questioning further. There could be more people here who are slightly better adapted to the environment than they realize. And shedding light on that is important for getting to a scientific understanding of how humans might move about more freely on this planet.”
Sam takes notes as I speak and asks me to describe some of the visions I’ve had. I choose the most practical one, the one most easy to explain the meaning of. I tell her about how I checked in on our crash site from afar and what my senses could tell me of the mining equipment operating near there. How the landscape was being disturbed and the life in it was uncomfortable with that.
Sam makes no direct comment on that, but she jots a bit more down and then reviews her notes. “So, you’ve gotten a chance to see several different cultures here on Chiron: Data Haven, the Morgan Domes, the Stepdaughters of Chiron. Where do you think you want to end up? Any of those? None of them? Somewhere else? Where do you want to belong, Mariah?”
¡Vaya! That is cutting to the quick, isn’t it? Is there any place here for me? “I think the Morgan domes can be made better,” I say slowly. “Right now, they are operating under a bad system, and the people in them are uneducated about the potential of the planet.” Although hopefully, not as much as they were before, since Louisa’s group accepted the task of spreading a virus that would share information from Marina’s zine over the ad networks. “But I don’t think the concept of domes is itself the problem. Having people—like here in the Garden of Chiron—have a space that they can live safely in but travel out from into the world to interact with it… I think that has merit. And…” I sigh, realizing something that has been quietly niggling at me for the past month. “The thing is, as fascinating as the planet is and how… overwhelming, at times, my connection is to it… I’m a city person at heart. A people person. Where would I want to live? I’d want to live in a place with a bunch of interesting people. Data Haven is tiny. And Data Haven is also… I don’t know… like… listless.” Nothing happens there. No one wants anything to happen there. They just want to stare at their computers or fiddle with their tools. There’s no sense of a community, for all that mealtime is communal.
“And maybe the Garden of Chiron is a perfectly nice place, but I think I have experienced something really hard here that would make it very difficult for me to stay here.” Lest Sam think I just mean what Dr. Gupta did, I quickly add, “And I don’t want to be a cult icon even though I kind of got talked into it… or talked myself into it… or whatever. And…” I let out a long breath. By this point, I’m leaning over, elbows on knees, holding my forehead with my fingers in my hair, and looking down at the floor. I wouldn’t normally bring this up, but I am at a therapist, and all this talking is helping. If there were ever a place and time to hash out my thoughts, it’s here and now. More quietly, not looking at Sam, I admit, “And I kind of met somebody at the domes that I’d like to get to know better.” I hear her pencil rasping across the paper of her notepad. “I don’t know if it would work out between us, but I want to give it a try.”
“You deserve to be able to give it a try,” Sam tells me. “And you don’t have to decide where you’re going to spend the rest of your life.” After a moment, she adds, “Other than probably on this planet. I think everyone gets one chance to move to a different planet in their life, at most.” I chuckle and straighten up, the tension gone for the moment. “It sounds like you’re having a positive impact wherever you’re going, so try not to be too hard on yourself,” Sam says. And try not to be too hard on Marina, I tell myself. “It’s a stressful planet that we all landed on—or grew up on. Whether that was Earth or Chiron.”
Sam glances down at her watch and then closes her notebook. “Thank you for the letter, by the way. I’ll have to send word that, yes, Bim can absolutely come to the city to finish his education. And good luck at these council negotiations!”
“Thanks,” I say, getting to my feet. “I hope the war does not come to your door.”
“Yes, me too,” she replies as we walk to the front door. “Because I don’t think we have a reciprocal licensing agreement with the Morgan domes yet,” she adds, applying a touch of humor.
I have one last question for her as we shake hands at her door, which is, “Where did you get that ink done?” I point down at her ankle, which I had a good view of earlier when I was avoiding her gaze. She looks at me quizzically for a moment but then refers me to a tattoo artist who works out of the Mushroom Grove.
So I make a stop there before returning to Marina’s place. I have lunch on Deirdre’s tab, which she offered me out of guilt but also past friendship. While I eat my soup, I finish up my sketches of what I want on my left forearm to obscure all the scarring there. I show it to the artist, and we discuss details and colors, settling on some nice purples and reds that closely match the xenofungus subject. She’s even got glittery dye that will provide an excuse for any extra glowing my scar shows when I’m particularly resonant. It emulates the look of the xenofungus rivers at sunset really well. The tattoo starts at my elbow and wraps around the forearm in both directions, a twining network of xenofungus briars that ends just short of my wrist, so as to be concealed by my cuff if I so desire. It’s a lot of territory to cover and kind of painful too, so while she works I chironically tamp down the ensuing inflammation. ¡Vaya! I’m floored by the tattoo when it’s finished. It looks awesome! The artist is surprised that it isn’t red and inflamed, but I offer no explanations. I simply roll down my sleeve and return to Marina’s, mood much improved for a number of reasons. I know one therapy session is not going to fix all my problems, but at least I’m better cognizant of them now and that’s a start.