by Devin Hanson
Angeline woke up back in her cot with her bladder full to bursting. Moving stiffly, she got up and relieved herself. Jasmine was still asleep in the cage next to her, but Adora was awake and stretching.
“How are you feeling?” Angeline asked, speaking quietly so she didn’t wake Jasmine.
Adora winced as a lunge stretched a muscle in her stomach. “I’ll live.” She coughed a rueful laugh. “For now, at least.”
“I didn’t know you could fight.”
“Not much good it did me,” Adora said shortly. She finished her stretches and dropped to the ground and started doing pushups.
Angeline watched her for a minute in silence. Adora finished her pushups and rolled onto her back to start doing crunches.
“Could you teach me?” Angeline finally asked.
“Teach you what?”
“To fight. I want to be like you. Strong enough to not be afraid.”
Adora stopped her crunches and stretched out her abdominal muscles. She was shaking as she did it and her shirt rode up, revealing the mottled blue and orange bruising on her stomach. Angeline blanched, but held Adora’s gaze without flinching.
Adora sighed and sat down on her cot. “I’ve been fighting for years,” she said ruefully with a shake of her head. “Every Monday and Thursday since I was eight. Taekwondo, judo and eskrima. Not much good they did me.”
“What’s eskrima?”
“Stick fighting. If I could get my hands on one of those stunrods…” Adora’s face split in a grim smile.
“So what do I do? How can I fight?”
Adora laughed, waking Jasmine up. “Do? Weren’t you paying attention?”
“Paying attention to what?” Jasmine said waspishly.
Adora turned her shoulder to Jasmine, ignoring her. Moving stiffly, she got down on her knees, stretched out and started doing pushups again.
Jasmine turned to Angeline. “What’s with her?”
Angeline watched Adora for a moment, then got down on her stomach and did a pushup of her own. It was a lot harder than Adora made it look, but she managed it. The second one was harder. By the third, she was trembling and barely able to straighten her arms. Angeline collapsed, breathing hard.
“What, you want to be like her?” Jasmine mocked. “Is that your ambition? To get kicked around and beat up?”
Angeline ignored her. She pulled her knees up under her and did another pushup. It was easier, but she still felt the strain in her shoulders and arms. Adora finished her pushups and rolled over to start doing crunches again, and Angeline followed her.
“I could never work out,” Jasmine said. “Guys don’t like it when you’re all muscley with veins sticking out all over.”
The crunches burned Angeline’s stomach, but she kept going, moving slower and slower until Adora stopped. Angeline was shaking and she swallowed a sob as her stomach muscles screamed their protest. Nausea coiled in her gut.
“Stretch it out,” Adora called.
Angeline looked over and copied the other girl’s position, lying on her stomach and using her arms to push her shoulders up. The cramping pain faded and Angeline breathed deeply, feeling her abdominal muscles relax.
Adora climbed to her feet and started doing squats, hanging onto the cage mesh for balance and holding one leg out in front of her at a time.
Angeline got up shakily and tried to follow Adora’s example, but her legs just weren’t strong enough. She made do with both legs on the ground at once. Angeline tried to keep up, but Adora kept going with the squats long after Angeline’s legs quit working and refused to lift her weight. With a groan, she sat down on her cot.
“See, you can’t do it,” Jasmine sneered at her. “That girl is crazy. All she’s going to do is get herself killed.”
Angeline pulled herself to her feet. She was sorer than she had ever been in her life. Her muscles throbbed and pain lanced through her legs. Still, she dipped down into another squat. If Adora could do on one leg, then she could do it with two. She gritted her teeth and forced her legs to straighten, using the cage mesh to help pull herself up with her arms.
Adora looked over at met Angeline’s eyes. She dipped her head in a tiny nod, acknowledging Angeline’s determination to keep up.
Angeline felt herself blushing. She had never had to do anything to prove herself to anyone else before, not really. And certainly not physically. The exercises stabbed at her, but she lowered herself again, determined to keep it up as long as Adora did.
Jasmine scowled at her and flung herself on her bed.
Angeline shared a smile with Adora and focused on keeping her legs moving. It was a tiny victory, but it made her feel warm inside. The feeling was fleeting, and once more, all Angeline could think about was the pain in her legs and the need to push up from one more squat.
Finally Adora finished her squats and moved onto her stomach to start over with pushups. Wearily, Angeline followed.
It might be pointless, she thought as she struggled to complete her first pushup, but she was doing something. While she could act, there was still hope.
She just wished hope didn’t have to hurt so much.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Live TV interview with a young woman waiting outside a large building still surrounded by the detritus of its construction:
Anchor: We’re here at the new Helix Center in Montreal. It’s negative twenty out here, but the line still goes all the way around the block. Excuse me, miss, how long have you been waiting out here?
Woman: Since six yesterday.
Anchor: You’ve been waiting all night? I understand there’s only a slight chance anyone will get accepted to start receiving the Helix Rebuild.
Woman: There’s a psychological exam, a pretty strict one. I guess they don’t want any crazies running around for the next thirty thousand years.
Anchor: And you’re freezing yourself on the off-chance you have what it takes?
Woman: I think I can stand a little cold for the chance to live forever.
Anchor: There you have it, folks. Do you have what it takes to live forever? With a line like I’m seeing today, better pack a sleeping bag if you want to find out. This is Tara Alexis for the Channel 12 News. If I don’t come in for work tomorrow, you know where I’ll be.
Marcus Truman woke coughing. He was wringing with sweat and his head throbbed. His lungs felt like they were half-full of water and every cough sent pain tearing through him.
He struggled from the grasping tangle of sheets and staggered to the bathing cubicle. His medicines and painkillers were set out on the counter ready for the morning dose. Still coughing, he fumbled out the small handful of pills. There were painkillers in that handful of colorful capsules, and muscle relaxants and expectorates, all designed to help control the wracking coughs that shook his body. But he couldn’t take them. He could barely draw a breath between coughs, much less hold his coughing down long enough to swallow the pills.
For a moment he panicked, sure he was going to die. Then he remembered the skin patches.
For an emergency only, his doctor had warned him.
This felt like an emergency.
Marcus ripped the package open with trembling hands, peeled off the backing and slapped the patch to his upper arm. Chemical wellbeing soaked into him. The tearing pain in his chest faded away and his cough settled. He could still feel the itch in his lungs that had had him coughing earlier, but his diaphragm lacked the strength to make him cough.
The hacking seemed to be under control. Marcus flicked on the lights and stared at his reflection in the mirror. His skin was pale, his eyes and cheeks sunken. He looked like he was dying.
Marcus opened the packaging on a pre-moistened towelette and swiped at the flecks of pink foam around his mouth. He looked like he was dying, because he was. Stage three lung cancer. He lay back on his bed, the aches and pains of his ruined body held back by the cocktail from his arm patch.
Modern medicine had kept hi
m alive so far, but there was only so much that could be done with drugs and painkillers. They were stopgaps, delaying tactics. Not a cure.
He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He felt a general sense of things coming apart at the seams. His body was on the brink of shutting down. It would be so easy to just close his eyes and leave everything behind.
No. With a groan, Marcus rolled to his side and shakily got his feet under him. He was exhausted, but sleep wouldn’t do him any good now. He knew from experience that he would wake up just as tired, just as sore.
Moving slowly and trying not to breathe deeply, he cleaned the stale sweat from his body and dressed. He had things to do. He wasn’t ready to die just yet.
“Good morning, Doctor Bannister,” Marcus said. The humid air of the hydroponic farm sat in his lungs like warm porridge. The itch in his chest was back with a vengeance, and he could feel the edges of pain starting to make their way to the surface of his awareness, as if there were a coil of barbed wire in his lungs and someone was pulling it out, inch by inch.
“Marcus, I’d say it is good to see you, but you look terrible! Have you seen a doctor?”
Marcus smiled tightly. He had to use a cane to help hold himself upright. Without it, the spinning in his head would have sent him tumbling to the ground in a moment. “I saw the doctor this morning, but I didn’t come to talk about me. How are the potatoes coming along?”
Andrea looked at him for a moment before giving a small shrug and a nod. “They’re doing quite well. Come along and I’ll show you.”
Marcus followed her through the verdant farm, moving at a snail’s pace. Andrea slowed down without comment to match his speed, and entertained them both with a running commentary about the plants they were passing.
Things were quite different than the last time he had visited. It had only been five days, but the pepper plants that had been heavy with fruit had all been harvested. Many of the plants had been pruned back and some of them had been removed entirely with new seedlings in their place.
“Turnover is the name of the game,” Andrea explained when she saw him looking. “Most pepper plants are perennials, but they have an expiration date just like all other living things.”
Marcus ignored the half-worded question.
“It is the nature of all life to die and be reborn again,” she continued. “As a farmer, it is my job to recognize when something has reached the end of its useful life span and terminate it before it turns into waste.” She raised an eyebrow at him pointedly.
Marcus coughed weakly and tasted the metallic tang of blood. “Very noble.”
“Humans have always striven to master life’s final decay. It could be said that every pursuit of man has been either toward or away from death. But it is only now that we can truly claim to have risen above that pursuit. Tell me Marcus, if you were to live forever, what would you do?”
What would he do? Ever since he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, Marcus hadn’t had a thought toward what would come after he finally received the Womack Process. Before that fateful doctor’s visit, he had been something of a professional lay-about. Inherited wealth and a general lack of motivation had let his early years of life slip past without goal or purpose.
Suddenly he envied Andrea’s evident contentment. Here was a woman who had found her place. She was needed in her society, respected by those around her. Wealthy, but not concerned with wealth.
“I… I don’t know,” he answered.
They walked in silence for a while.
“How long do you have, Marcus?”
He shrugged. “A week. More. Less.”
“You came to Mars for the Womack Process,” Andrea said. It wasn’t a question, but Marcus nodded anyway. “Do they still hate us on Earth?”
Marcus looked up, surprised at the bitter note in the doctor’s voice, but nodded. “We celebrate the December Protocol.”
“It must be strange for you, then, to come to Mars and look to make yourself into what you hate.”
“It isn’t like that,” he said. “Well. For some it was. Is. There have always been people that think the Process could have been made to work on Earth.”
“Misogynists.”
“Not all of them.”
“Rich, then.”
Marcus cleared his throat uncomfortably. He didn’t actually know anyone who had had to work for a living back on Earth. “Perhaps.”
“Let me clear something up for you, Marcus. The December Protocol saved humanity as a species. The Womack Process could never work on Earth. There are too many people.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s simple. When Dr. James Womack made the Process public, he made it so the open market decided the price of the treatment. There was demand like nothing in history. It was the ultimate commodity. Forget oil. Forget pharmaceuticals. The egg of a human female became worth its weight in diamonds. More than that. And with value came investors and speculators and control. With control came people who sought wealth outside those controls.
“It’s the story of every commodity in human history, but sped up and amplified to a degree that can’t be stated simply. You were rich. Acquiring your treatment would have been as simple as going to your nearest clinic and getting the injection. It would have cost, but what of it?
“Think, if you can, of the plight of the average man who worked for his living. What hope had he of acquiring his treatments when the price spiked into the thousands of dollars a month? If he had been so unlucky as to start his treatments before the price spike, he was doomed unless he found treatment outside the clinics, and those treatments were made from murdered women.”
“No, Mr. Truman, in an open market, the Womack Process guarantees the destruction of the civilization.”
Marcus swallowed, digesting what Andrea had said. He had known, of course. What child who went to school didn’t? But Andrea sounded like she had been there. Hell, maybe she had been.
“How is it successful on Mars, then?”
Andrea smiled, dropping the grim look. “You asked the right question. It’s simple. There is not a free market. For you to receive your first treatment, someone who is already receiving them must vouch for you.”
“That sounds… flawed. As a method of control, I mean.”
“You’re not wrong,” she laughed. “But consider. An upstanding wujin such as myself would want people who were going to be a benefit to society to live longer. Someone who could produce and trade in value, either goods or services. There is a finite supply of eggs. Creating a new wujin increases the price of my own treatments. I have to consider this, you see, before I give someone my blessing. If every wujin were to bring in people freely, the market would collapse and the egg shortage would lead to many of us dying.”
“And what of people who are possessed of less than pristine moral quality?”
“For them it’s even worse. You’re talking about criminals?”
Marcus nodded.
“Well. Mars has them, don’t doubt that. But a criminal enterprise is concerned about profit first. The ring-leaders can afford their treatments, and it isn’t uncommon for them to offer the treatments as an incentive for loyalty or sacrifice. What can be given can be taken away, though. You’d be surprised how many criminals die of organ failure every year.”
“Sounds like it balances itself out.”
Andrea nodded. “It does. And so I come back to my original question. What do you plan to do with your eternity, Mr. Truman? Assuming you find a sponsor before a week is out.”
They came to a stop before the portal leading to the soil-floored chamber. Marcus considered the question while Andrea opened the door. The portal hissed open and Marcus followed Andrea through. Perhaps a quarter of the wide-open space had been dug into furrows. Marching in machine-precise rows in between the furrows, Marcus saw the twin leaves pushed up through the rich soil by sprouting potato plants. Hanging from tracks in the ceiling, a robotic watering arm
was moving with mechanical precision, squirting a calculated dosage of water onto each plant.
“I suppose I would distill,” Marcus said. “I always enjoyed alcohol on Earth. I ran a small distillery for a few years. I enjoyed the work. And it would pay for the treatments.”
Andrew nodded, looking out over the field with a proprietary gleam in her eyes. “It is a business,” she agreed. “But that doesn’t tell me what you’d do. My farm occupies most of my time. It is as big as I can manage comfortably, but it doesn’t leave me with much leisure time. And I designed it that way, quite intentionally. I imagine, though, that a small distillery would not occupy your time fully.”
Marcus shook his head. “It wouldn’t. I would have days of downtime between batches.”
“I can give you some advice for free,” she said. “It sounds like a good idea, but after a hundred years, you will want something to occupy your mind. So, back to the start once more. What will you do, Marcus Truman?”
Marcus closed his eyes. He recognized the cadence in Andrea’s voice. She was testing him. What had he enjoyed doing, back on Earth? What could he do that would occupy his mind entirely? He thought back to his life on Earth prior to his cancer. He had not been happy. An eternity of that life would have ended rather quickly with a bullet or an overdose.
It wasn’t until he learned that he was going to die that he had applied himself for the first time. The furious activity during the days leading up to the launch of his supplies to Mars had made him feel alive. There was irony there, that he had felt dead inside until he was, in fact, dying, and only then did he feel alive.
“There was a time,” he said slowly, trying to find words that fit around the amorphous idea in his mind, “where I was fully occupied. I was researching and putting together the cargo for my shipment to Mars. Bringing all those pieces together, arranging everything, making sure there were no problems and solving the problems that did come up. That felt good. I felt good.”
