Suicide Club

by Rachel Heng

  Time was measured in the beating of her mother’s mechanical heart. Thud, thud, thud. Space, in the number of steps taken to cross the room to retrieve the dried meals that arrived at regular intervals.

  Her mother’s heart, rupture-proof, was now visible through a transparent film that had once been her skin, wrapped around a cage of bones. Anja could predict with split-second accuracy the rising and falling of each atrium, each ventricle. Each beat was exactly the same as the last. She watched it fill and squeeze, valves open and close, the ink-colored SmartBloodTM flowing thick and steady.

  Thud, thud, thud. Like the footsteps of someone pacing back and forth along the corridor of a big, empty house. The heart would be the last thing to fail. It had the longest working life and had been the newest, most cutting-edge technology. The skin had been the first. Anja had watched as it mottled and shrank away from the bones, great stains of tea brown spreading.

  DiamondSkinTM, they called it, self-repairing and extra tough. To a point, until her mother reached the end of her predicted enhanced lifespan, and the clinic doors of spotless glass slammed shut forever. So Anja waited, alone with her in this dark room that smelled of stale water, with nowhere to go.

  * * *

  When her mother first took to bed it was not so bad, because at least they could still talk. Back then, she could pretend things were normal, even as her mother’s muscles atrophied under the embroidered quilt and her lungs slowly collapsed into themselves. They passed their time in idle conversation, talking about anything and everything—music, Sweden, Anja’s father.

  Sometimes Anja would play the violin for her, the strings pressing cold and cruel into her stiff fingers. She was out of practice, and it showed badly, but her mother no longer pointed out her mistakes. She didn’t seem to hear the flat notes or stray beats, only smiled quietly, eyes on the ceiling, hands clasped on her hollow stomach.

  Anja longed for harsh words, for her mother to point out where she was going wrong and to call her lazy, complacent. To suck the air in through her teeth sharply and stamp her feet, to rap Anja hard on her knuckles the way she used to. So Anja started playing badly on purpose, notes slipping and sliding, rhythm askew, watching in quiet desperation for the slightest twitch of displeasure on her mother’s face. But it never came. All that remained was that blankness. Anja packed her violin away in its dark-velvet case, the shiny metal clasps making gunshot clicks as they snapped shut.

  * * *

  When Anja was a girl, a proper girl with ropey limbs and scattered acne, her mother used to take her swimming in the Baltic Sea. They would rise at dawn, when the clouds were still asleep and the air was damp with fog. Wrapped in thick bathrobes, they’d cycle the shrub-lined path in the dim light, anticipating each bump and turn before it came. The cloistered morning seemed to go on forever, as if in a dream. But then suddenly, just as their sandaled feet started to go numb in the wind, the path would open up and there it would be: lapping, metallic; the open sea. They stripped quickly, leaving their bathrobes in a pile, tripping lightly over rough sand and spiky little plants until they reached the edge of the surf. It was better to do it quickly, so they always plunged straight in, pushing through the suffocating chill that pressed from all sides until the sandy bottom dropped away and there was nothing left to do but swim. Her mother’s limbs shone like ivory in the pink morning light, fearlessly sluicing through cold. They did this every morning of her life; but then they came to New York, and there was nowhere to swim.

  The day her mother said her last words, they had been talking about their beach. How the sand would rub their feet raw, the steely water blending into the sky. How the sharp cold, more heat than cold, never failed to take their bodies by surprise. Her mother wondering if their neighbor, Mr. Andersson, was still watering their plants as he had promised, waiting for the day when they would return to their little white house by the sea. Anja reminding her that Mr. Andersson was long gone, fifty years ago at least, before they even introduced life extension in Sweden. They had embraced it by now, of course, but were still a long way behind America.

  It was in the middle of this reminiscing that her mother’s voice box quit, the muscles clenching around shapeless sounds until they gave up forever. At first, Anja kept talking, filling in with what she imagined her mother would say. It helped that her mother’s eyes were still alert, still met her own with a burning life. But eventually they dimmed. Then her skin started to fade, losing its color and opacity. It grew harder and harder to keep up the one-sided conversation.

  Now Anja sat silently in the hard wooden chair next to her mother’s bed, listening to the pumping of her mechanical heart.

  She told herself that her mother was long gone, her spirit extinguished like a flame in an airless room. She told herself that her mother was no longer there, that the body that remained was an imposter, a shell. A prison.

  But sometimes she saw her mother’s translucent eyelids twitch, and she wondered. And always, always there was the relentless thud, thud, thud of the alien heart, a sound that haunted Anja in her sleep, in her dreams. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t shake the idea that her mother was still in there. Trapped in the dark, unable to speak or see.

  How long had it been now? She couldn’t tell. The days smeared into one another.

  * * *

  Before they turned milky and white, her mother’s eyes had been the color of the sea. A clear, cold gray, the color of ice on a freshly frozen lake. When Anja looked in the mirror now, all she could see was her mother’s eyes staring back at her. Her mother’s eyes, her mother’s sharp nose, her mother’s pale salmon mouth.

  * * *

  Just to see, what’s the harm? That was what her mother had said when they first arrived in New York and walked past the clinic. So they got tested. It turned out they both had good genes, excellent genes, so good that they were eligible for all kinds of subsidized treatments. They laughed it off. That was not what they were here for; no, they were here for the music. Her mother to sing, Anja to play the violin.

  But the thought of living forever was a slow-burning disease she’d caught from the moment they took those tests. Her mother started living like the Americans, no longer eating meat or even fish, her hefty bulk dwindling into an efficient, gym-honed leanness. She stopped running because of what it did to her knees. Eventually she sang less and less, because they’d told her about her heart, how it was the weakest link in an otherwise immaculate genetic makeup. There was also all that excess cortisol production involved in being a musician. Occupational hazard, as they called it.

  Her mother became obsessed with enhancements, and then repairs. First it was the skin, regrafted every fifteen months; then the blood, souped up with microscopic smart particles, nanobots that cleansed and repaired and regenerated. The day they replaced her heart with a high-powered synthetic pump, Anja practiced the violin till her fingers turned purple and raw. At the clinic, she searched her mother’s face for clues as to where this would end.

  Now she knew, of course. This was where. The two of them in this empty, damp room with nothing but a few instruments to their name. The treatments were subsidized only up to a point, growing more and more expensive as her mother reached the end of her predicted lifespan, until they had nothing left. All there was left to do now was wait.

  * * *

  Her tablet began to ring, but Anja ignored it, instead standing up and walking over to the window. She placed her hands on the smooth painted wood and pushed up. At first it wouldn’t budge, so she pushed again, this time harder, and the shawl around her neck fell to the floor. The window’s dusty seams creaked as it opened.

  The smell of the city was crisp and sour. It hit her nose like salt water, making her eyes well up. The streets outside were empty, and most windows were dark. How many others were there, dying and unable to die? At least her mother had her.

  The shrill cry of the tab bled out onto the empty streets.

  Anja stepped back from the window, s
lipping a hand into her pocket. Her fingers closed around a card she had been carrying with her for a long time, ever since her mother had taken to bed. With her thumb she traced the curves of embossed numbers that she knew by heart now, a phone number printed under two words in bold red type: SUICIDE CLUB.

  FOUR

  It was always a matter of focus, as most things were. So Lea focused, pushing every stray thought out of her mind, forcing herself to relax and breathe. She focused on the sinuous curve of Todd’s shoulders dipping and rising, blurring and sharpening with the movement of his head. She focused on the damp heat of his hard flank pressing against her calves. His cheeks, crumbed with stubble, on her inner thighs. Her fingers, which had been resting gently on Todd’s head, gripped a handful of hair. He sped up, but Lea closed her thighs and sat up.

  “What?” he said, pink lips glistening in a blade of light.

  Lea slid off the bed.

  She checked the living room first. Everything was as it should be. Throw pillows neatly arranged on the mid-century couch, cashmere throw draped over its gray herringbone upholstery. White storage units lined the wall, flushed orange in the morning light. Paper lanterns scattered through the room pulsed a soft, pale pink, a hue meant to energize and uplift. The spotless linen curtains hung still, the furniture mute in its coordinated palette of neutral shades. The marble floor was cold beneath her feet.

  Lea walked through the entire apartment twice, checking the kitchen, bathroom, guest room.

  When she returned to bed, Todd shot her a look.

  “I thought I heard something,” she said.

  Todd propped himself up on his elbows, worry creasing his brow. “You have to stop. All this paranoia—it’s not good for you.”

  “You don’t get it. Do you realize they were there? In my office? Asking questions, talking to the receptionist. And—” She stopped.

  I saw him. My father. But the words stuck in her throat. Todd knew about her family, of course he did, but to him it was nothing more than backstory, a tragic chapter of Lea’s life that was long past. As far as he was concerned, it was a thing that she had overcome.

  Todd’s warm toes found her tailbone. Then his fingers, kneading upward, digging into the hard muscle that knotted her spine. When he reached her neck, Todd wrapped his fingers around the bare, smooth length of it, thumbs working diligently. She stiffened.

  “What?” Todd said.

  She pried his fingers from her neck, leaning forward out of his reach.

  “What else can I do? How can I convince them?”

  “Like I said, you don’t have to convince them,” Todd said. “This whole thing is crazy, Lea, they’ll realize sooner or later they’ve made a mistake. The Ministry will sort it out. There’s no point getting worked up, losing days over this.”

  Lea stood up from the bed and turned toward the mirrored wardrobe. Even naked, she could still pass for no older than fifty. This wasn’t unique to her, of course; most lifers close to a hundred were indistinguishable from those in their first half century. But it was how you looked as you approached your second century that really counted. Still examining her straight spine, the well-calibrated gap between the tops of her thighs, and the subtle hollows of her hips, it was hard to believe that she, of all people, was under Observation.

  “Worrying about it is only going to make it worse,” Todd went on. “Healthy mind, healthy body. Can’t you just ignore them?”

  “We lost the Musk account because of them. That could set me back by years,” Lea said.

  “You haven’t lost it,” Todd said. “They said it was on hold. Why assume the worst? Maybe if you just—”

  “Just what?”

  Todd looked away. He smoothed out a crease in the sheets.

  She knelt down next to him, running her palms over his thighs. Under the soft skin, freckled with blond hairs like the surface of an alien planet, was a hard solidity that always fascinated her. One day, that would be all that was left, she thought, suddenly sad. SmartBloodTM, DiamondSkinTM, and ToughMuscTM, living on into eternity. She pushed away the thought of her father’s face, dark with pigmentation and ridged with creases.

  Todd placed his hands over hers. “I know it’s going to work out. You’re the best, most dedicated lifer I know, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “But what if it doesn’t? What if—”

  “I’ll go to the Ministry myself and tell them. I’ll tell them about how you were the first lifer to give up running, even before the high-impact advisory came out. I’ll tell them about the way you split your Nutripaks into half-hourly portions to ensure optimal nutrient release through the day. I’ll tell them about the two hours you spend meditating each night, the daily morning stretches you’ve never missed a single time, the—”

  “Okay, okay, I get it,” Lea said.

  She smiled, but her insides still felt tight. The look on his face now was the thing about Todd. Why, maybe, they had now been engaged close to eight years and still hadn’t set a date for the wedding. Todd, with his impeccable genes and trusting goodness, his firm belief that the Ministry was fair and reasonable. Todd, with his Healthfin family, his trust fund that meant he was able to pass his days indulging in languid self-maintenance. Todd, who had never known a sub-100 in his life, who existed solely on the plane of the genetically blessed.

  But wasn’t that why she was with him? Didn’t she wear Todd like a Band-Aid, armor against her muddled past? Wasn’t he her crowning glory, the last puzzle piece of the life she wanted, the life that Uju would have wanted for her? Their offspring would almost certainly be lifers and, for all they knew, could even be the first to break the threshold. Immortals. They’d have as good a chance as any, with Todd and Lea’s genes.

  Lea stood up abruptly. “Come with me,” she said.

  She took him by the hand, leading him to the smallest room in her apartment. It had originally been conceived of as a walk-in wardrobe. Now it was full, ceiling to floor, with paintings. The tall mirrors that spanned the length of one wall were smudged with streaks and spots of color.

  Todd never came in here alone. He was always sweetly respectful of what he considered her odd private hobby. Now he stared at the canvases with polite puzzlement, brow furrowed as if he were trying to solve a math problem.

  “What do you think?” She spun him around to face the large easel that stood splayed in the middle of the room. “It’s the city,” she said, pointing to the grid, the skyscrapers, the ombré sky.

  “I see,” Todd said, nodding slowly. Lea could see that he didn’t. Still, she picked up the canvas and held it out to him.

  “Here. I want you to have it.”

  “I can’t take this,” Todd said. But when Lea didn’t move, he took the painting from her gently, taking care not to touch the glistening surface. “It’s beautiful,” he said with a certain resolve. “Thank you.”

  Lea kissed him the way she always did, lips parted as if to sip from a straw, tongue coyly poised on the edge of her teeth. Hands stroking his sinewy, strong neck, reminding herself that this was it, this was success. Healthy mind, healthy body.

  They did it on the floor, cold marble pressing against her thighs, surrounded by canvases and the chemical smell of liquid color. Outside, the sky was thick with clouds.

  FIVE

  Everyone was born with a number. They ran the tests immediately after birth. A simple swab of a wailing throat, parents waiting, hands clasped nervously, for the moment that would define the rest of their child’s life. Sometimes the results came out as a mother held the baby in her arms for the first time, staring into its liquid, barely human eyes.

  That was how it had been with Lea, so the story went. She had heard it countless times—how her mother had asked them to repeat themselves, and then, on hearing the same thing, insisted they repeat the test. The brusque way in which they stated that they did not make mistakes, the doctor so offended that his black mustache wouldn’t stop twitching. How she still couldn’t bring herself
to believe it, but found herself crying anyway, tears dripping down her chin to fall onto little baby Lea’s perfect, round cheeks, how Lea had parted her tiny pink lips and tasted salt for the first time.

  It had been different with Samuel, of course. Forty years before Lea was born. Then her mother had remained expressionless, taking the news as though she’d expected it.

  First there was Samuel, and then there was Lea. Uju and Kaito gave them what they thought were good American names, names that signified a new beginning for their family.

  The doctors gave it a million-to-one chance, what had happened. It was extremely unusual. Siblings’ numbers were usually within a hundred years of each other; each extra ten years of divergence were a slap in the face of probability. For one to be a lifer, and the other not—that was practically unthinkable.

  Sometimes Lea wondered if a gene pool were finite and could only be split so many ways between siblings. If she had stolen something from her brother. But she never let herself wonder for too long.

  * * *

  “Good morning, Lea!” the receptionist trilled as the clinic’s doors slid shut behind her. “I’ll let Jessie know you’re here. Won’t be a moment.”

  Other customers, mainly women in pencil skirts tapping away at their tabs, sat in the glossy reception area. Some held glasses of khaki-colored liquid, freshly cold-pressed at the clinic’s veggie bar. Its solid pine counters, white Zen paintings, and paper lanterns were all designed to soothe.

  Lea ordered a ginger tea from the attractive barista at the counter. She watched the outline of a vein in his forearm as he sliced a stalk of fresh ginger into wafer-thin strips. Perhaps he was in training to be a surgeon. He couldn’t be a day over fifty and was probably finishing up his third decade in med school. These days, she’d heard, every clinic job was hotly contested by students eager to get any experience they could, even if it meant blending smoothies and scrubbing latrines.