Author: C.R. Kiegle

“You’ll need to initial here, here, annnnnd, here,” the man at the check-in counter told Estella as he flipped through the pages of the form. The room was lit with white, sterile lights that had a slight blink.
“Mmm. Okay,” she replied quietly, marking her initials with pen strokes that looked less like letters and more like the scribblings of a toddler on a sugar-high.
“Don’t you want to read through the form first?” the man asked. Estella shook her head.
“I want my mother’s eyes.”
“Yes, but, the procedure-”
“She was murdered.”
“Ah.”
That was all that needed to be said. Sure, the procedure to transplant eyes was not one that could be reversed. Sure, her eye-see computer and all the memories of her life she had stored within it would be replaced with those of her mother’s. But despite all the happiness she had experienced in the three years since her mother had died, living with the knowledge that she would never really know who killed her mother had gnawed away at her until even what should have been the happiest moments of her life felt numb.
Estella took a seat on one of the grey waiting room chairs whose backs barely reached the curve of her back, staring ahead blankly. A moment, a breath, and she opened her eye-see.
“Awake at last, mi amor,” her husband whispered at her in the first memory she had queued to watch. It was the second day of their honeymoon on an island in the Pacific, and in the distance behind him she could see the pinks and oranges and blues of a tropical sunrise.
“It’s still early, dear,” she had replied. His greying hair had an attractive orange tint in the rising sun, but the shadows exaggerated the lines of the wrinkles on his face.
The memory flashed away as Estella waved her hand, and another appeared in its place. Her mother sat next to her at the top of the mountain they had scaled for Estella’s 18th birthday, just four years ago.
“Good choice, going early,” her mother had said as they watched the sun rise below them. “And happy birthday.”
“Thanks, mom,” Estella had replied. She watched her mom put her arm around her shoulders, and the current Estella felt cold when she couldn’t feel the warmth of her mother’s arms around her.
“Estella?” a nurse’s voice interrupted. Estella waved her hand again and the eye-see flashed away, and once again she was in the sterile white room.
“We’re ready for you.”
Blue eyes shut and green eyes opened hours later. Estella was still Estella, but even before she went to start her mother’s eye-see computer she could tell her eyes were no longer her own as she realized how poor her mother’s vision had been.
“Queue my last memory,” Estella told the eye-see. Within an instant she was in her mother’s office at night, walking to the elevator. Forgetting it was a memory, Estella tried to turn her head, but found herself unable to swivel her head.
Footsteps sounded louder and louder in the hallway behind her. Sterile white lights blinked above her.
“Hello?” Estella asked in her mother’s voice. At last, she turned.
“Your daughter looks so much like you, mi amor.”
Estella waved her hand before she could watch the man move any closer, tears falling from her mother’s eyes.
“You alright?” a nurse asked as she checked Estella’s vitals.
“Can you- can you-” Estella stuttered.
“Do you need something, honey?”
“Can you- can you delete a memory from the eye-see?”