365 tomorrows

The worst had happened. I was in the care of Beloved Uncle, the public face of the Eastern Police. He had been appointed as a Machiavellian move, the political men who installed him meant to allow him a reign of outrageous violence to quell the populists and then kill him and replace him with someone who would seem gentle in his wake. Instead, the Beloved Uncles’ first action was to destroy the men who had appointed him.

“Ignorance is no excuse under the Law.” Beloved Uncle was a man who could kill me publicly without retribution, and I was arguing with him.

“They weren’t even really children! They were just rendered to look like children. They were all over the age of digital consent, they signed the forms!”

Beloved Uncle was surrounded by his honor guard, a group of impossibly proportioned transparent women. These cyborg women had brought me to him, who now held my broken shoulders clenched under their diamond fingers. Glass, plastic, silicone, a slender steel spine, gloriously nubile, fierce, terrible, naked women, even more beautiful with blood dropping off their hard crystal skin, my blood. The Beloved Uncle was smiling, rubbing his hands together with glee.

“The images were sold as child pornography, the determination of which is left to me. The law is clear. You are now mine. Your new name is Brandy, cheap liquor synthesized by sods. You are not dead right now, Brandy, because your skills make you useful to me. Do you understand? By my mercy do you live.”

“Please, I-”

“Speak no further Brandy, I don’t want to hear it. I have already heard your tragic story from my glass sluts.” The Beloved Uncles eyes glimmered with bursting glee. “I want to show you something.” He took his cane from under his arm and hoisted the gleaming metal before me.

“This, Brandy dearest, is the Sphincter Stick. It is my most favorite of birthday presents. Do you see these shiny buttons? I am told that there are two hundred and fifty four combinations for these buttons, and each will produce a different, painful, potentially lethal result.” He cradled the cane in his arms, rubbing the top joyfully. “Some of the combinations produce swarms of metallic wasps.” The women stared at me dispassionately and Beloved Uncle continued with enthusiasm. “I like to try out different combinations each time someone, someone like you, comes in here without results. I’m an old man though, and sometimes I forget the combinations, so I have to go through a lot of them before I get to something new, do you understand?”

The Beloved Uncle was condemning me to something worse than any prison sentence, worse than public execution. I was going to work for him.

“I have an assignment for you Brandy, and you won’t come back to me unless you have tits or results. If you value your life, you will have both.”

I couldn’t speak, I could only nod and pray silently.

It’d be funny if I could still laugh.

Instead I sit here smiling, waiting for the nurse, smiling at the white and the clean and the pure. I hate smiling. She’s smiling back at me too, her teeth as white as the walls, undoubtedly brushed with the same sanitizer. I want to punch her but instead I take the pills and thank her pleasantly. She’ll be back tomorrow, she says, and no funny business this time! Her sunny smile ratchets up a notch and mine goes with it. Oh, no, no funny business. None of this is funny.

A year ago I never thought of disobeying. I took my assigned pills like everyone else and didn’t know any better. It was Lenny who told me, in hushed tones overwritten by the sound of the flushing urinal, that he knew something that would make your mind go wild. It’d be special for me, he said, something normal people could never get near. All I had to do was stop taking the big one, the one with the odd lump in the middle and the diamond shape. That was it. I thought he was nuts.

Lenny was right, though I didn’t believe him at first. It didn’t kick in until halfway through work. The woman in the next cubicle almost called 911—she thought I was dying. She’d never heard anyone laugh before.

I lied and told them I was sick. I’m pretty sure I just never went back. It was like finding the thing you’ve been missing all your life, the pressure that builds up in your chest and then bubbles up, rocky and imperfect and so goddamned exhilarating. I’d never been exhilarated before.

Now I stare up at the nurse’s placid smile, so like my own, and think of the downside. That was how they caught me; after months of the high, it all disappeared, falling away like caked mud from old boots. I could barely move for weeks, sobbing and shivering, feeling like the whole world had ripped apart and the tear was inside me, breaking me down. This woman doesn’t know that. All she knows is that they brought another crazy man in, and it’s her job to make me obey. I look down at the pills in my hand, if only to get my eyes off of her sickly sweet face.

Just do it, she says, and I look back up. Her lips are still smiling as she says, It’s not worth it, they’ll just catch you again. I’d frown if I still knew how. She smiles back at me, encouraging, and after a moment I pop the pills under her watchful gaze. There, she tells me soothingly. Was that so hard?

There must be something new in today’s batch, because I can feel my train of thought fuzzing out as I look back at her, knowing I’m helpless but letting the thought slip away in the wind. The smile stays with her as she turns and I watch, right up until she closes the door. I stare after her as the world softens and know, in that moment, that she laughed once, too.

It didn’t look like much of a robot. It was soft and lumpy and didn’t have any flashing lights or make any noises beyond a low hum. But it could hold a drink tray steady enough to entertain at parties, so she was satisfied.

Its warm battery was also a comfort on lonely, chilly evenings. She would wrap her arms and legs around it, the low hum lulling her into a contented sleep.

How was she to know what such a gentle act would lead to? She could never have known that the radiation would cause her limbs to wither, to grow brittle and useless, or that they would have to be removed. How could she have?

I went and saw her the other day. I watched her and her robot rolling around on the carpet, gaining joy from each other’s movements. As true a love as anything I’ve seen.

April was a maintenance worker, so she lived on the inner ring. The cheaper quarters meant less gravity and thinner air, but it rarely bothered her. In fact, after five years in the belly of the satellite she found herself nauseated by the full gravity of the outer ring. Out there, her mop shed water with alarming speed, and she could feel inertia forcing blood into her swollen feet.

April hadn’t mopped anything since impact. Three days had passed since the transport tunnels shut off, and a few hours ago she’d noticed that the televisions tuned only to static. She didn’t know if help was on the way. The satellite was big but space was far bigger, and April was sure that rescue ships would evacuate the outer rings first.

April was not a scientist, but she knew that life support would be the last system to go.

Six days after impact, April weighed nineteen pounds less. The vents still hissed with recycled air but the only light in her quarters came from the luminous window. In that window, Earth remained a cloud-drenched crescent surrounded by stars that never moved. Nothing changed. April could see her home world through any window in the satellite, because the satellite had no windows.

The viewscreens were life support. Necessary for the mental hygiene of the staff.

Six days after impact, April peeled the foil from her last granola bar, hummed a song she barely remembered, stretched out across the battered foam of her sofa, and waited for the stars to go out.

For Naru, and for Mae’s bedroom wall.

I had a scrambler at home, up on the shelf where it wouldn’t be noticed even if someone was looking. It was long and thin, like the baton they used to wave over your body when you set off the metal detectors at airline security. I always kept it carefully polished. On nights like this, when I’d come home tired and drained and sick of punching in and punching out, I would pull it down and run it over my face, my hair, and my body. Then I would go out.

I had different personas, different faces, for all of my favorite moods. One was Abigail, an overnight check-out girl at the local Safeway. When I was her I was simple but bubbly, very cheerful, blue-eyed and sandy-haired. Then there was Ronnie, my Wednesday night, the anachronism, stuck in her beehive-hairdo past and always calling everyone “sugar.” Some of my other lives even had friends and acquaintances, people who recognized me only as the fantastic concoctions I wore after dark.

Sometimes I’d be celebrities, but only at home. I’d never go out with someone else’s face; that’s illegal, and anyway it would prove I had a scrambler. The government banned them about a year and a half ago when bank robbers kept changing their faces for each crime. I don’t think it’s so bad, though, to want to be someone else for a night. You could do it with makeup anyway, so what’s the difference? The scrambler just gave me more choices.

None of my friends knew. To them I was just Hester, the plain and quiet one. Sometimes my girlfriend Janie would sit me down over coffee and give me her patented worried look. She’d tell me that working in a factory all my life wasn’t saying much, that I should get out of this rut, try to find something better. I was worth it, she told me, with that too-sweet pout that I knew meant she didn’t really believe I was worth it at all. I hid my smile and told her I was fine, that I was perfectly content to be somebody’s support, to stay second-best. She smiled because she knew that by ‘somebody’ I meant her.

Those were the nights when I would put on my most coveted face, the most rare. Those were the nights when I would be Tera, the star, the elusive punk-rock sensation who never scheduled a gig but was always welcomed with screaming fans when she dropped into a club to play for the night. I rode the sea of adoration and smirked to see Janie fainting with joy like the rest of them. The scanner stayed safely tucked away in Tera’s jacket. On those nights, this was reality, and Hester was just our little secret.

Related Link: DESI DESI

“No, I don’t think you understand. Let me tell you about death.”

The mechanic’s subject blinked. The mechanic allowed himself a bit of wonder at the ingenuity behind that movement. It did nothing; the subject’s glass eyes were not cleaned or refreshed with liquid. And yet, it did everything for the person watching the blink.

“I have been shut off before,” the subject said.

“How many times?”

“Twice.”

“Did you know what time it was when you were turned back on?”

“Yes.” Another blink. “I am not sure what you mean.”

“Your internal chronometer, it was still working. You knew what time it was because your clock was still going. You were still going. You were still alive.”

The mechanic’s subject was processing this, blinking again and tilting its head to one side. The mechanic put a reassuring hand on his subject’s cold shoulder. On the subject’s reflective head, he watched his own face crease unconsciously out of friendly concern.

“I’m not trying to confuse you. I just want you to understand. If I do what you’re asking me to do, it won’t be like being shut off. You will stop. And that pulse of electricity that keeps you alive even when you’re not aware of it will cease. If I were to reconnect you—I wouldn’t, no need to look so alarmed—but if I did, you would not come back to life. Who you are would be lost. Gone, never to return. Do you understand? Death means you do not get a second chance.”

“Then that is exactly what I want.”

The mechanic shrugged his shoulders, wiped his greasy hands on an even greasier rag, and pulled the wire-cutters from his toolbox. As he reached into the subject’s neck, he found himself wondering if it looked sad, or it was merely the reflection of his own expression, seen flawlessly in that shiny face.

“Thank you,” the subject said. “Thank you for fixing me.”

“It’s nothing.”

Riktor ducked beneath a broken beam in the house and kept his live porta-mic on at his side. The satchel strapped around his left shoulder hugged him tightly.

“This is Rik Vance with Underground Union reporting to you from housing project 56.” He heard the groans coming from down the hallway and the din of unstoppable chatter coming from a floor above him. His eyes widened as he looked through two dark doorways at his side, waiting for an attack.

“It’s what I like to call the house of blues. You’ll understand in a second. Ladies and gentlemen the world is becoming wool to pull over your eyes, and it’s all thanks to Pharmceude Industries. I’m here at housing project 56 because this is where the products of a test gone horribly wrong were put to be forgotten. Like the crack houses of the 20th century, this place represents broken down souls, lost in addiction to what can only be described as popularity.”

The reporter glanced around a corner, noting a few individuals whimpering , curled up in make-shift beds of insulation foam and broken doorways. He winced and started to assess the situation in his mind, tapping the pistol he had at his side to make sure it was there. “Most of the underground kids listening know what I’m talking about. It’s not new, it’s just been put back on the market for those who can afford it. It’s called Notion, folks… and it may sound like a miracle, but if you could see what I see now, you’d know it was only paved with good intentions.”

A man glanced up, his eyes sunken in. He reached out for Riktor from afar before collapsing into sleep. Noises soon came from the stairs and two individuals, looking just as sunken as the man but dressed to go out, came down chatting up a storm. Riktor turned and looked at them in horror and sadness but nodded to them both as they passed him. “It was developed for those with social anxiety and Attention Deficit Disorder. What it became was escape, and this escape digs the hole deeper than you know. Notion is a blue biogel once known as Tetroglichen on the market a decade ago.” Riktor glanced back to the man who had passed out and walked over him, kneeling down to put a nutrient pill in his hand.

“Ask your children what it does, and if they tell you the details, then they are probably on it.” He sighed and stood back up, wiping his hands off and going towards the stairway. “Everyone wants to be popular, everyone wants to be the one running all the conversations. Notion blue can give that to you for a precious few hours.”

As he came to the top of the stairs, Riktor heard the noise of talking begin to rise, and he closed his eyes, knowing it would only get worse. “Save your kids. Save yourselves. You’re never too unpopular to work your way up, you’re never out of all the loops. For God’s sake, don’t take the easy way out.” He stepped onto the landing and saw three doorways where the noise was pouring out of and stepped towards one of them slowly.

“I was a Notioner once. I can remember every word spoken was as good as the first time you kiss, the first time you have sex and I wanted more. The need to have the person next to me speak almost as much as it was good to hear myself speak. I am ashamed I used to be like this.” There he stood before a room of individuals all talking, all smiling, all staring intently at the others’ lips in anticipation. Riktor took a step inside and the conversations continued without a foreseeable end.

“This is what you do when you think you’re a loser. It’s what you do when you think that no one will like you unless you’re like them. Drugs were once an indirect way of being social. Notion makes it as direct as a meteor crashing on your city.” He began to take pictures with his wrist-camera, watching as one had stopped talking and began to wander off outside the room. Riktor followed, watching the young girl cradle herself in her arms and slump against the wall. She was on the verge of tears by the time he came close.

“Your children can make friends like you did when you were young. Don’t watch them fall into blue, don’t let them be fake. Don’t ever let them be fake. Vik Out.” he knelt down and took her hand, but she pulled it back, and looked to him with large blue eyes. Her words were shaken but came out clear.

“Do… do you have blue?”

Riktor frowned and turned away, unable to watch. “No,” he said quietly.

She turned her gaze away and whispered back, “Then I don’t want to talk to you.”

Two weeks ago Forsythia moved into a new apartment in a beautiful old high-rise. Everything there was antique, from the dark wood paneling to the rich carpeting. It was a far cry from the decaying 20th century-style cinderblock tower that Forsythia used to live in. There were multiple elevators, each shiny brass. Ever since she moved in, the elevator on the far right had an “out of order” sign hung in front of it between red velvet ropes. Today the sign was gone, so Forsythia got in.

“Floor twenty please.” she said as the brass doors were closing.

“Take the stairs!” screeched the elevator.

Forsythia jumped, gasping. The voice had come from the lacquered ceiling. The elevators only other occupant, an elderly woman named Stacy, patted the Forsythia’s shoulder affectionately.

“Don’t worry about it, honey. That’s just Robbie.”

“Robbie?”

“The elevator. He’s just mad because he’s dead.”

Forsythia put her hand on her chest and tried to calm her breathing. “Oh, I thought most elevators don’t have personalities.”

Stacy nodded. “Oh, they don’t. This one doesn’t either. Robbie is inside the elevator.” She winked knowingly.

“What?”

The elevator stopped. It was the third floor. “GET OFF!” screamed the elevator “TAKE THE CRAPPING STAIRS!” The lights indicating the floor blinked wildly.

Stacy folded her arms in front of her chest and frowned. “Robbie! You will close that door and take this nice young lady to her floor.” The door closed slowly, stopping a few times in childish protest. The old lady smiled, wrinkles bunching around her eyes. “Sorry about Robbie dear, he’s upset because he died in this elevator.”

“My God!” said Forsythia. “How did it happen?”

“The antigravity failed – it was in the old days, when we thought the whole thing was foolproof. The only thing Robbie had time to do before the crash was upload his circuit memory into the elevators processor.” She patted the faux wood paneling affectionately. “Poor dear. He won’t even pay attention when we tell him that there haven’t been any stairs for the past fourteen years. I don’t imagine he wants to think about it.”

“Think about what?”

“A world without stairs.”

The elevator doors opened reluctantly. “Hasn’t anyone ever tried to get him out of there?” Forsythia asked, stepping into the hallway.

“Oh my, yes, we’ve tried to convince him to let us put him on the worldwide system but he won’t go.” Stacy smiled, lifting a hundred wrinkles upward. “I think he likes it in here.”

Her hair is wet and stringy with amniogel and the tips of her fingers are wrinkled. She is thrashing around as much as the restraints will let her, choking and vomiting the pink nutrient liquid. This one is well-preserved. The centuries have left her untouched.

Her small breasts are quivering with each gasp and tears are leaving clear trails across her goo-covered cheeks. The choking turns to sobbing and screaming, but the rebirth chamber is soundproofed for privacy. Down the hallway, dozens of people are waking just like her, thrown violently against the wall of the present. I chose this one, Jennifer six three nine, because she was the most beautiful. They pay well for the pretty ones.

Her neurons are finding their ancient paths and she is remembering who she is. I can tell by the shrieks, which are beginning to separate into syllables. I readjust the microphone to better catch the terror in her voice. They pay well for the terror.

During my training as a technician, I was required to undergo rebirth. I remember the feel of the chamber’s metal grate against my naked back, and the slow stickiness of the gel rising to meet me. My wrists and ankles were bound with foam restraints to keep me from hurting myself during the shock, but I didn’t think I’d fight it. I was wrong. I closed my mouth against the liquid but it leaked through my nose and trickled down the back of my throat. I couldn’t swallow it all. When I coughed it up my lungs replenished themselves with a mixture of air and soupy pink, and though my brain understood it my body knew, beyond logic, that I was drowning. My back arched and my arms fought against the unyielding restraints. I choked with such force that I could feel the muscles in my chest strain under the tension until something clicked in my mind. Something went quiet. The last air bubbles drifted lazily through the goo and I understood that I was powerless, that no amount of fighting could save me. I inhaled as deeply as I could. My lungs filled with endless warmth.

For an unknown amount of time I drifted through a space between sleep and awareness. The low current of energy through the chamber stimulates REM sleep, but I wouldn’t remain there long enough to go under. The rebirth started with an electric hum and the feeling of suction through the grate at my back. It was worse than drowning. It was drowning in reverse.

When my lungs had rid themselves of the last of the amniogel, the restraints released with a metallic click and I sat up, my arms wrapped around the burning muscles in my stomach. Everything was so cold. I was impossibly naked and impossibly cold.

“It’s not so bad, is it?” my technician asked. It took him hours to offer me a robe, and I buried my face in the towel as I struggled to fight off the tears. “Don’t forget what it feels like,” he continued. “They’re not coming up from six minutes ago. They’re coming up from centuries.”

When I opened my eyes, I saw him leaning against the control panel, his arms folded across his broad chest. There was a bulge in the crotch of his jumpsuit. I pulled the robe tighter around my shoulders and focused on the feeling of air in my lungs.

“Get dressed,” he said, and left for the bathroom.

I didn’t forget. You don’t forget something like that.

Her back is against the grate of the chamber and Jennifer six three nine is almost done fighting. Her breathing is soft but ragged. I throw the switch for the clinical lamp over the chamber and she recoils, eyes clenching shut and arms straining against the restraints as she tries to protect her face from the light. I put away my equipment and the foam bars over her wrists and ankles retract with a click.

She draws her hands across her eyes to wipe away the tears and goo. When she opens them, they’re blue. I wish I had kept the camera going. No one has blue eyes anymore.

After a long pause, I hand her a terrycloth robe. “Welcome to the twenty fourth century, Jennifer,” I say with practiced warmth. She smiles weakly and pulls the white fabric tightly around her naked form.

Kadence smiled, looking over the vast rolling hills of sun soaked wheat. Her hair waved in the wind and the world seemed to pause to give her innocent beauty notice. Palestine approached from behind with soft footsteps, coming to watch the same glorious picture.

“It’s… without comprehension.” Kadence couldn’t stop herself from grinning wider. She stared out over the world, built over billions of years of evolution. Palestine put his hand on her shoulder, his tall figure dwarfing hers even as she stood on tiptoe to see over the waves of wheat in the horizon. His mouth moved to speak but at the last moment he let her perfect words sustain. He smiled, brushing fingers through her hair. It wasn’t the scene that made the mood so divine. It was everything leading up to that moment.

“I thought you’d like to hear the announcement before they shut off the Net, but this is much more peaceful.” Palestine tilted his head while she cradled herself against his chest. The world had become perfect.

“No,” she said. “I wanted to be here, the world has finally finished its journey. There’s no need to go back to the city now, Palestine. We should celebrate here, the celebration of ten years ago. A decade since the day they stopped all war.”

Palestine nodded and happily continued her recounting of events, “When they found a cure for all ailments.”

Kadence raised her head up, her hand resting at the base of his neck, her sea-green eyes transfixed and adoring. “When everyone took down their flags, and the world became one nation.” She paused and then let out a whisper, “When the hunger, and anger ceased to be.”

His voice was soft in the calm breeze, “When the religions closed their churches, their temples, all their doors. When God was one and the people became the same underneath him. Nothing more.” A tear slipped over Kadences’ cheek at his words. Her warm body pulsed, a perfect heartbeat of serenity. No stress, no hesitation about the world around her, she was as peaceful as the first moments of sleep.

Palestine’s chest rose with a sigh under her cheek. Something was stirring in them, a flame so bright that it was overpowering. Their hearts, their very souls became as warm as the heat of the sun. Palestine cupped her chin, tilting her head back. He looked into Kadence’s wet eyes, her tears falling onto the soil beneath them.
“Today is the last day,” he said. “They have disbanded all organizations, and they have told us to prepare.”

“What have they said, Palestine?” She looked up, her eyes curious. His expression was a mixture of emotion. He stroked her cheek lightly with the edge of his thumb. She closed her eyes in response, nodding gently. “Then it is done.”

“It’s done. It will start once more, ages from now, without us.” His words were lost to Kadence. She could barely make out his lips moving. In that field on that day, they died with the rest of the world. Trees fell to dust, insects became smoke, and even the smallest virus was brought to oblivion. Everything living and existing ceased to be.

Except for one, deep within the now-still lifeless ocean. It began once more.