Chapter 1

Content warning: car accident, suicide ideation.

You know the name Oliver Templeton, the man who invented the automatic belt (“Automatically adjusts for Thanksgiving dinner!”) and the Internet-connected contact lens. You may have heard the story of when his wife died in an accident with her teenage daughter in the car. The poor girl was pinned in the back seat, unable to move as her mother bled out in front of her. Poor Arcadia and her father were never the same again.

Next on ‘Where are they now?’ Scott Baio!

Oliver started awake as his daughter Arcadia screamed from her room. He quickly rushed to her side to hold her. This had been a regular occurrence for the last couple years, so both were wearing pajamas. “You’re okay, Cady ... it’s fine ... everything’s fine...” he whispered into the 18-year-old’s ear as he stroked her ash blonde hair and she sobbed into his pajama top.

“I wanna die...” she moaned. “I can’t live like this...”

Oliver resolved to finish his latest invention in the morning. Arcadia had been getting worse lately, so he knew that she would try to end her life again. He tried not to think of the scars on her wrists. Her nightmares were horrific, and sometimes she would actually have visions of her mother dying during the day as well. The poor young woman did okay in remote learning school, as she could schedule her work for when she was having a good day -- well, a day that didn’t involve her screaming, anyway.

While she was concentrating on her schoolwork the next morning, he downloaded his findings from the sensors he had put in her pillow. Arcadia had tried counseling and psychiatrists, as well as several different antianxiety and antidepressant drugs, but they only seemed to help a bit. Based on the consistency of her ECG results, though, he was sure that he was onto something. He’d never be able to patent his idea because he was using someone else’s work, an obscure paper from a Dr. Jacqueline Stevenson from 25 years ago that talked about modifying thought processes using oscillatory waves. He wasn’t able to find anything from Dr. Stevenson since, and his attempts to find her had proved fruitless -- he figured that she had probably been plucked up by the military -- but the idea had percolated in his genius-level brain until he had a theory, and today, after months of trial and error, he was going to test it.

“Cady? Can you come here, please?”

Dutifully, the slim blonde came into the kitchen. As per usual, she was wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants and looking like she hadn’t slept. Her eyes were sunken and lifeless. “Yes, Daddy?”

“Have a seat here. I’ve made something that I think will help you.”

“Well, my pants are stretchy enough that I don’t need an automatically adjusting belt.” She gave him a wry grin as she sat at the table.

He smiled back. Even depressed and suicidal, she sometimes still had a good sense of humor. He brought forth his gadget, a thick plastic half-halo.

She took a closer look. “A hairband?”

“Yes. Just pull your hair back, and...” He pushed the tines of the band into her hair so that it would hold in place. With her hair pulled back, away from her face, Oliver saw his daughter’s pretty face again, looking so much like her mother. He gave her a wistful smile.

“So what does this do?” she asked, looking skeptical.

“This should help with your episodes,” he explained. “It’ll recognize when you’re stressed and put out an inverse brainwave to counter it, and it uses bone conduction so you can hear a recording of my voice letting you know that everything’s okay, like I do when you have nightmares at night. Some additional alpha waves will relax you. I’m hoping that all of these things together should allow you to ... well, have a normal life.”

She looked up at him. “This is total science fiction, Dad.”

“Please? Just for 24 hours? I’ll check up on you after lunch.” He looked at her hopefully.

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, 24 hours. I’ll try anything at this point.”

“Cady? How you feeling?”

She looked up from her work. “Hm? Oh ... fine, I guess?” Then she thought about it for a moment. “I’m feeling fine! Daddy! It works!” Her smile beamed at him, so long forgotten.

“Well, we’ll have to see what happens tonight.”

That night, he quickly swapped out the small batteries from the device with new ones. “And these go into the charger over here.” He pointed at a small plastic device on her nightstand.

“Did you invent that too?” Arcadia’s eyes were wide.

“Um, no ... these are rechargeable hearing aid batteries. Someone beat me to that one.”

“Oh.”

Oliver woke to the sound of his phone alarm, set for 2 AM. He blearily shut it off (well, after a couple of snoozes), grabbed his tablet, and then headed to Arcadia’s room.

He could hear her snores before he even got halfway there. Smiling, he pushed open the door and brought up the app that connected to the sensors in her pillow. There had been some nightmare activity an hour ago, he saw, but the headband had done its job and suppressed those brainwaves. The alpha waves afterward, combined with some theta waves because it was nighttime, had relaxed her enough to go back to sleep.

Nodding to himself, he went back to bed.

He woke up an hour later to her scream. He rushed into her room, but she was already asleep again. Not bad, he thought, but he would finetune the headband in the morning.

“So how did you sleep, sweetheart?” he asked his daughter at breakfast.

She was smiling, and garbed in a yellow sundress. He recognized it from his wife’s old wardrobe, though Cady had to cinch it a bit tighter than her mother around her slim form. “Great, I think. I felt so rested when I got up!”

“Any nightmares?”

She shook her head, beaming. “Nope! Well, none I remember, anyway. Let’s hope it stays that way!”

Oliver nodded. He had added an extra feature to the band that he hadn’t told his daughter about. If it got overwhelmed trying to help her, it would fire a pulse that would keep her brain from saving her short-term memory to long-term storage. Even if she had a nightmare, she wouldn’t remember it. She would still remember her mother dying -- nothing he did would ever erase that -- but his device would make sure that she didn’t compound her trauma with memories of these recurring nightmares.

She got to her feet. “I think I wanna go for a walk around town.” It was Saturday.

He stood up. “Are ... are you sure? It’s been a long time ... I should go with you...”

“Sure! C’mon...”

And so they went for a nice stroll. Arcadia pointed out buildings that had changed since she had last seen them. Oliver bought them soft pretzels from a cart. They walked through a park and ended up at McDonald’s for dinner. All in all, it was a spectacular day, after 2 years of worrying about his daughter killing herself.

“This was so nice, Daddy,” Arcadia said as they headed back, arm in arm.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

The week passed much as that day had, and Arcadia visibly improved. The bags under her eyes had faded, and her figure had even started to fill out as she gained some much-needed weight. It was Friday night, and Oliver was getting dressed to go out.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay, Cady? I can cancel...”

“No, Daddy, go ahead! You both ‘swiped right’ or whatever, and you’ve put your life on hold for me long enough.”

“Okay, pumpkin. I’ll try not to stay out too late.” He gave her a peck on the cheek and headed toward the door. “Unless I get lucky!” He gave her a grin.

“Ew, Daddy!”

He gave her a frown, then a half-smile and a wink, and left.

Arcadia looked out the window. The sun was about an hour from setting. She considered for a moment, and then headed out the door in another of her mom’s sundresses, red this time. She strode toward the canal, which she figured would give her a spectacular view of the sunset.

She sat on a bench at the edge of the canal park and watched the brilliant red and orange hues of our local star dip below the horizon. Glorious! she thought. Why had she locked herself away from all this wonder?

“Hey, cutie!”

She turned to see a man sitting down next to her. He was a bit older than her, maybe 25 with dark hair, and kinda good looking with his goatee. He was wearing a jean jacket without arms, showing off his muscles and tattoos.