by David Mack
Metzger added that to the ever-growing list of things she no longer recalled.
Routine and repetition were all that Metzger had left, and all that Valerian had left. In the mornings, they walked to the beach. Sometimes, Metzger had stayed the entire day, until the sun set and Valerian took her arm and guided her home again, to the courtyard.
Before Metzger’s vision had deteriorated, however, she had often left Valerian to enjoy the ersatz paradise alone, excusing herself to take refuge on the top level of a nearby tower, one of the highest vantage points in Axion. Elevated above the spires of the metropolis, Metzger had lost herself against the vast canvas of space and stars.
“The outer darkness,” she had called it, in the days before darkness had become her norm.
She breathed in the salty air and tried to make herself believe that it was real, but she couldn’t. There was no cure for knowing it was a lie—a hoax, just like the sand and the surf and the sun. There was nothing here worth believing in.
Except for Sidra.
Turning around was a labor of small steps, uncertain pauses, calculated risks. It felt as if it took forever before she was facing the cliff wall that concealed the exit. Metzger could have sworn that the angle of her shadow was moving faster than she was. Then she nudged herself forward through an act of sheer will, and said to the Caeliar’s machine, “Let me out.”
The exit appeared. The oval aperture was wide, and its bottom was perfectly flush with both the beach and the corridor floor on the other side. Metzger was grateful to be spared the need to step over anything; she left the simulation with weak, shuffled steps. She doubted that Valerian would even note her absence until dusk. Maybe not even then.
I’ve held on for so much longer than I thought I would, Metzger thought, shambling along. I must be a crone by now.
Minutes passed, or maybe hours, while Metzger forged ahead in quaking steps, her weight supported by a simple cane. As much as she had disdained the Caeliar’s moving walkways and pod lifts in the past, she depended on them now. Once she’d reached the city’s pedestrian network, it whisked her along in ease and comfort, straight into the main level of her favorite tower.
Calling down a pod lift was effortless; she stood in the empty, illuminated ring, and a pod formed around her. “To the top,” she croaked, her voice brittle and breathy. Without delay, the transparent cocoon surrounded her. She was hurtled upward, past the blur of one level after another, until she found herself on the tower’s top floor. The pod dissolved, and she stepped forward, through an arched portal onto a balcony surrounded by black sky and stars.
A blank slate, she thought, peering into the endless night. I stared into it so long that I became it. I gazed into the abyss and erased myself.
Her past was gone, fled from her, and had been for a long time. I can’t remember the faces of my children, she lamented. My sweet, lovely Franka … why can’t I see you when I dream? Jörn, my little man … you looked so much like your father, but I’ve lost you both. Tears ran from her half-blind eyes, down her slack and fissured cheeks. She couldn’t even remember her own past—the images of herself as a child and as a young woman were faded and out of reach. Her life was a gray memory, dim and lost.
Metzger had tried to be strong and defiant like Fletcher, but Fletcher had never had a family. At first, Metzger had thought that the hope of returning to her kin might be a source of strength. Then months had turned into years, and years had become a lifetime … and hope had become despair.
There’s nothing left to hope for, Metzger told herself. She’d held on longer than she’d wanted to, and she knew that it was because of Valerian. She had found some measure of meaning in her life by caring for the emotionally fractured younger woman, but it no longer felt like enough. I can’t live for someone else, Metzger admitted to herself.
She had told herself the same thing every day for what felt like months now, during her daily retreats to this perch above the city. Her intentions had been clear from the beginning, but one thing or another had held her back. A lifetime of losses, grudges, and mistakes had burdened her and rooted her in place.
One by one, she had made her peace with them all. Day after day she had come to the top of this tower, stared into the void, and shed her emotional ballast.
Fear was the first burden she’d cast off into the night. Guilt was the second. Then all that remained had been a legion of regrets: words left unspoken, wounds left unmended, debts left unpaid. The last was one that could not be helped—there was no way she could explain herself to Valerian.
She won’t understand. But that’s not my fault.
Looking up, she let the fathomless darkness consume her final lamentations, the end of her hope, and the vestiges of her memory, until nothing remained. There was no more cause for joy or weeping, no more grieving for the life she had lost or the one she had lived in exile.
There was only blessed emptiness.
Metzger leaned forward, over the balcony railing. Her stiff, arthritic back protested as she forced herself to double over. The pain is an illusion, she reminded herself. It’s just the last hurdle. Up and over. Tucking her chin toward her chest, she felt her toes come away from the balcony deck. Then gravity took hold, tugged the rest of her body over the railing, and pulled her in its steady, loving embrace toward the ground—toward release. For a moment, she felt weightless.
Then she was free.
* * *
Hernandez looked down into Valerian’s glassy blue eyes and saw no spark of life left in them. The mute woman’s chest expanded and contracted with slow, shallow breaths, and her heartbeat was barely palpable when Hernandez pressed her palm on Valerian’s sternum. “It’s been almost three days,” she said. “She can’t last like this, not for much longer. She’ll dehydrate.”
“I just can’t believe it,” Fletcher said, standing on the other side of the bed. “I wasn’t even sure she heard what we were saying when we told her about Johanna.”
Stroking a wild tangle of Valerian’s unkempt hair from her forehead, Hernandez was struck by the prospect of losing two of her only three friends in less than a week. After Inyx had broken the news of Metzger’s suicide, it had fallen to Hernandez to go to the simulated beach and collect Valerian.
The change in the daily routine had immediately made Valerian edgy. Neither Hernandez nor Fletcher had meant to confront the fragile younger woman with the tragedy right away, but the empty seat at their shared dinner table, and their own grave moods, had made the subject unavoidable. The consequences had proved worse than they’d feared; the revelation that Metzger had taken her own life and was gone forever had pushed Valerian into a denial so profound that she sank into catatonia.
Inyx stood at the foot of the bed and waited on Hernandez. “What do you wish to do?” he asked.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Hernandez said, torn between what she felt she could live with and what she thought was merciful.
Fletcher took Valerian’s left hand in hers and squeezed it. She looked at Inyx. “What could you do for her?”
“I’m not entirely certain,” Inyx said. “Our examinations of her through the years have always suggested that her malady is purely psychological in nature. As such, we would advise against any pharmaceutical interventions.”
Bitterly, Fletcher replied, “In other words, with all this power and all these gadgets, there’s nothing you can do.”
“On the contrary,” Inyx said, “there is a great deal that we can do. I only doubt that the great majority of it would be of any therapeutic benefit to her affliction. In the end, I suspect that anything short of our most invasive efforts would serve only to prolong her current, isolated existence.” He directed his next words to Hernandez. “But if that is your wish, Erika, we will do as you ask.”
She reached down and clasped Valerian’s other hand. “I don’t know what to do, Ronnie. I want to save her.…”
“Why?” Fletcher’s grief was as raw as Hernandez’s own,
but her defiant spirit was as strong as it ever had been. “What would be the point, Erika? She’d be alive, but that’s not the same as living, and you know it.”
“I don’t know anything of the sort,” Hernandez said. “Inyx, she has brain wave activity, doesn’t she?”
He made a slight, concessionary bow, arms apart. “Of a very limited kind,” he said.
“So, who knows what kind of life she’s living inside her head? Maybe it’s paradise in there.”
“And maybe it’s limbo,” Fletcher said. “Or purgatory. Or hell, or just plain, simple oblivion.” Sorrow moistened her eyes as she looked down at their stricken friend. “Face the truth, Erika. She’s gone, and you know it. We have to let her go.”
Hernandez shook her head. Valerian’s hand was still warm to the touch, and even if the light had gone from her eyes, there was still blood coursing in her veins and breath moving in her lungs. Her heart was beating, and her synapses were firing—even if it was only a lonely few of them holding the fort until true consciousness returned. It didn’t matter to Hernandez that Sidra Valerian was old—she was alive and worth fighting for.
“Inyx,” she asked, “can you do more than just keep Sidra’s body alive? Is there anything you can do to help her heal her psychological injuries?”
The question made the lanky alien think for several moments before he answered. “It’s difficult to predict,” he said. “Our methods would involve making significant alterations to her biology and linking her mind to our communal gestalt.”
Fletcher was horrified. “You’d turn her into one of you?”
“Not truly one of us,” Inyx said. “But she would become integrated into our community. If we can achieve a balanced communion with her consciousness, we might be able to quell her emotional turmoil and restore her to a greater semblance of her former self.” His enthusiasm waned as he added, “The process would, however, entail a significant risk. We’ve never tried to fuse our catoms with non-Caeliar life-forms before.”
That earned a contemptuous snort from Fletcher. “I take it back. You wouldn’t be turning her into one of you. You’d be turning her into a bloody guinea pig.” She glared at Hernandez. “Don’t let them do it, Erika. She’s not a piece of meat to be experimented on. Let her die with some dignity.”
It was tempting to think of Valerian being restored to the woman she’d been fifty years ago—at least, in terms of her personality. And it was the very sense of temptation that told Hernandez she had to resist. There was something wrong about it, something unnatural. And maybe Fletcher was right—perhaps it was also, in some distinctly human-specific way, undignified.
Still pondering her options, she asked Inyx, “What about sedating her into a gradual cardiac arrest?”
“The word you’re avoiding,” Inyx said with sharp sarcasm, “is ‘euthanasia,’ and its practice is forbidden here. We will not engage in it, nor will we tolerate its use in Axion.”
“But suicide seems to get the stamp of approval,” Fletcher sniped. Hernandez threw a silencing glare at her old friend.
Inyx continued, “We can apply pain-blocking medications and protocols as a precaution, in case the patient’s mind is still conscious on some level and cognizant of the body’s suffering or discomfort. However, this prevention of pain is accomplished without the risk of aggravating the patient’s condition.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Hernandez said, short-circuiting any further dissent from Fletcher. Pointedly, she asked the other woman, “Any problem with that?”
Fletcher sighed and averted her eyes back toward Valerian. “No,” she said. “No problem.”
Inyx folded his tendril hands in front of him. “Of course, to impose a medical procedure on someone without proper consent would be an act of violence. Because Sidra is not competent to make an informed decision, and you’re her commanding officer, we consider you to be her guardian, Erika—and we will engage no medical efforts without your permission.”
Hernandez looked at Valerian, and then she looked up at Fletcher, who said simply, “It’s your call, Erika.”
She looked to Inyx. “You promise she won’t suffer?”
“We will do all that we can to prevent it.”
She palmed tears from her puffy, wrinkled cheeks and nodded in the face of the inevitable. “Let’s get on with it, then.”
* * *
The waiting was the worst part. Encamped at Valerian’s bedside with Fletcher, all that Hernandez could do was sit and be numb as she watched Valerian deteriorate. Only a week earlier, despite being in her seventies, Valerian had been vital, able at least to savor her moments in the Caeliar’s ersatz sea.
Now her cheeks were gaunt, her eyes sunken. Her skin had become sallow and flaky. “Maybe we should give her water,” Hernandez said, second-guessing all her decisions.
“It’ll only prolong her decline,” Fletcher said. “Ketosis is a good way to go if you let it take its course. If she is conscious of anything, there’s a good chance she’s semi-euphoric from all the fat her body’s burning.”
It had been six days since Hernandez had made her decision to let Valerian fade away. Since then, either she or Fletcher had been at Valerian’s side, and usually it was both of them. They’d taken turns eating, napping, and using the lavatory so that, in case Valerian regained consciousness, there would be someone there to halt the process. That moment hadn’t come.
Valerian had gone all these days without food or water. Hernandez knew that renal failure must be imminent for Valerian, if it hadn’t already occurred. Once Valerian’s kidneys failed, the end would come within a day or two as toxins in her blood disrupted her heart.
Time had crawled during Hernandez’s decades in Axion, and it also had flown. Trudging through the monotony of routines and rituals had felt like slow time, a life sealed in amber sap, barely moving, trapped in stasis. But then, one day, she’d looked up to find forty years had passed. Now nearly fifty.
Most of my life went by before I knew what happened, she realized. Measured against that, a few days should be nothing. But this feels like forever.
There were no clocks to watch, no calendar pages to turn. In the cosmic scale of the Caeliar’s search for a new world to claim as their own, nothing marked the lost hours and seconds. Valerian’s irregular gasps for breath made it clear that these insignificant increments of time were all that were left to her; she’d see no more days, no more years.
An upwelling of panic impelled Hernandez to her feet. Trembling in her steps, she shuffled away from the bed at a pace only the elderly would consider hurried. Her hands shook as she reached out for something to steady herself.
From behind her, Fletcher asked, “Where are you going?”
“To call for Inyx,” she said.
Fletcher’s tone was sharp. “Why?”
“I’ve changed my mind.” She reached the doorway and was gathering her strength to cross its threshold when Fletcher stopped her with the piercing anger in her voice.
“Stop, Erika,” Fletcher commanded. “Don’t do this, not like this. It’s almost over, and she’s not in any pain.”
Hernandez shut her eyes and leaned against the doorway. “I can’t just let her die, Ronnie. We can’t know what Sidra really wants. What if she wants to live? What if she’s in there, wishing she could wake up?”
“No, Erika, stop.” She heard Fletcher get up from her chair and walk toward her in slow steps. “If Sidra wanted to be here, she would be. But she’s been running away for a long time, ever since Erigol was destroyed. This is just the last step for her. Let her take it in peace.”
She opened her eyes to find Fletcher beside her. “What if the Caeliar can help her, Ronnie?”
“They can’t do anything without changing her,” Fletcher said. “What they’re proposing would make her something not quite human anymore. It’d be invasive and would violate the very core of what Sidra is. Is saving her life worth taking away her humanity, Erika? Is death that frightening?”
Turning away, Hernandez looked to the stars and said, “Inyx, are you listening? I need you. Please.”
Fletcher grabbed Hernandez’s shoulders. “Think about what you’re doing! Sidra’s ready to go—don’t force this on her!”
Specks of airborne dust seemed to catch the starlight for a moment, and then they coalesced into glowing motes. In seconds the flurry of tiny lights swirled together and fused into a white radiance that faded to reveal Inyx on their doorstep. He gave a small, courteous bow and said, “How can I help, Erika?”
Guilt made her look to Fletcher for forgiveness, but she found only seething resentment and disappointment in the other woman’s gaze. To Inyx she said, “I’ve reconsidered your offer. I want you to help Sidra, any way you can.”
Inyx looked past her, toward Valerian. “Her condition has worsened. The process would be challenging for her, under the best of circumstances. She’s very fragile. Are you sure you want to change course now?”
“Is there any chance that you could save her? That she could talk to us again?”
The tall, gangly Caeliar scientist crossed the room to Valerian’s bedside, reached out, and let the tendrils of his right arm caress the dying woman’s face and throat. Then he looked back at Fletcher and Hernandez. “There is a chance.”
“Then do it,” Hernandez said. “Hurry.”
He pushed his arms under Valerian’s emaciated body and lifted her from the bed. Fletcher was sullen as Inyx carried Valerian into the courtyard, where he summoned one of the Caeliar’s signature silver travel disks. He stepped onto the disk and said, “Erika, you’ll need to come with me. Veronica, you may attend the procedure if you wish.”
“No, thanks,” Fletcher said, and she walked away.
Hernandez joined Inyx on the silver disk. She gently took Valerian’s hand as the platform ascended from the courtyard, hovered above their residence, and accelerated into the heart of the city. Traveling above dark boulevards in a city of perpetual night, and seeing Valerian cradled in Inyx’s skeletal arms, gave Hernandez the troubling sensation of being a passenger on the ferry of Charon, crossing a black river into the underworld.
