"Here," she pours a tall glass of ice water and places it into my hand. "Drink this."
"Who are you?" I ask, "What is this place?"
"This is the Rebirth Center," she answers. "I am MA-368. You may call me Ma." Her electronic voice betrays a compassionate warmth. In a comforting tone she orders me to finish the water and to lie back and try to sleep. "You are exhausted," she says, "Your body needs to rest."
"But the babies," I ask, "What's wrong with them?"
Ma's voice becomes firm. "Why, there is nothing wrong with them," she says in a tone that leaves no room for argument. "They are exactly as god and nature and the city and their parents have made them."
"But what is this place," I ask. "This Rebirth Center?" Already my eyes are growing heavy and the soft cot seems to suck me down into it. My mind begins to wander and drift, and I can imagine Ma smiling as she speaks.
"This is where the unwanted babies are born," she explains, "This is where the ugly ducklings and the sickly ones and the damaged children are born and where they stay until they-"
"Stay?" I mumble as I'm drifting off.
"The ones who are born in such a way that no human eye should ever have to look upon them, stay here. My little sugarplums. They stay here until they are well enough, and then they leave." I thought of Dexter, skulking in the shadows and living a life out of sight of the prying eyes of god-the thought of those all-seeing, selectively blind eyes made me remember the items in my sack. "And the ones who are too sickly live here until they die here," she finished.
"I thought you said that there was nothing wrong with them…" My weary voice sounds distant and slurred.
"There is nothing wrong with them," Ma insists. "They are exactly as god and nature and the city and their parents have made them. All of the healthy children bred in the birthing centers are returned to their parents. And the unhealthy ones-the muties, the sickies, the deformed, diseased and disfigured-remain here. Their parents are given other, healthier children.
"But healthy or not, they are exactly as god and nature and the city and their parents have made them. But no human eyes should ever have to look upon them."
"Why not?" I ask. Ma remains silent. "Why shouldn't human eyes ever have to look upon them?"
After a moment, she answers, "They never have. It is better this way." But she doesn't sound as if she believes herself. "Now sleep."--
Neural Log: 23:83-17-
--I dream that I am flying. Soaring majestically up through the rings of Crack City. Over balconies and under sky-bridges, cruising boldly up to and over the eyes of god, and then quickly turning and arcing down, down towards the Refuservoir, gaining speed, momentum, inertia, plummeting almost to the point of impact and then up again-past the Red Ring, past the cafeteria window, past the credit-lined sidewalks of 24-G and up, up, up through the very Crack itself and on into the dazzling, fiery heavens.
Looking down I can see that Crack City is just a glowing scarlet slash in a cold black orb, a crimson eye watching me from below, but growing smaller and smaller as I ascend, impotent and powerless to stop me…
And in my dream I am suddenly, powerfully aware that ascension is all that there is-a beautiful, natural aspect of the soul. Of every soul. In death we are all free-free of rings, free of levels, free of aspiration, free of struggle. Free of the myth of 24-G.
It occurs to me that there is no such thing in life as rising or falling, climbing or sinking-the rings and levels of Crack City are nothing more than a game of the living. The soul can never be demoted, it cannot help but to ascend, to rise, to escape, to be free. The only real demotion is for the living.
The only real demotion is for those helpless, hapless children born in such a way that no human eyes should ever have to look upon them…--
Neural Log: 23:85-35-
--When I awake, I know that it is for the last time. I am dying. My bloated stomach tells me this as much as the sour taste in my mouth and the throbbing in my brain. But for the first time in all of my memory, I am not afraid.
Another fit of vile retching seizes me, and when I finally catch my breath I look up to find Ma holding me in her metal arms. Warm plastic fingers stroke my fevered cheeks, comforting me, caring for me.
"What's wrong with me?" I ask, as if I don't already know.
"Nothing is wrong with you," Ma whispers softy. "You are exactly as god and nature and the city and your parents have made you."
"But I'm too sick to live," I smile. "So it looks like I'm going to die here."
"Then that is as it should be," Ma answers. "It is better this way."
"But before that happens," I struggle to sit up-a violent pain erupts in my belly, making me gasp. "Before I die, Ma-there's something I want you to help me with, there's something that I want to do. There's a… gift I want to give."
"Gift?" Curiosity tinges her voice, "For whom?"
"For you, Ma" I smile. And then I start to laugh until the pain in my gut makes it too hard. "For everyone."
"What is it?"
I have to think about this before answering.
"Salvation," I finally tell her.--
Neural Log: 23:85-97-
--The components of my velvet sack are laid out neatly on the floor. Some have been taken apart, scavenged for parts, others proved altogether unnecessary. It took us the better part of the day, but with Ma's help my project is now complete.
Mounted to the corner of the ceiling, the eye of god is positioned to look directly down on the twelve cradles. Ma has removed the blankets from the infants, exposing them in all their disfigured glory.
A long wire snakes down from the eye of god and connects it to the neural implant that I'd removed from the factory conveyor below the Refuservoir. Ma holds the implant in one hand and an electric scalpel in her other, as she prepares to begin the operation that will kill me.
I feel the knife cut, slicing cleanly through skin and skull. I feel Ma's plastic needle-fingers gently lifting the bone away, then poking, prying and closing on my damaged neural implant. Carefully, she removes the broken implant and replaces it with the new one-the one which is directly linked to the eye of god.
"Are you ready?" she asks. Ready not sure, she never asks me if I'm sure.
I nod. She turns from me and flips a switch on the wall giving power to the eye and to the implant. My brain is flooded with images and voices and news and conversation and ads and prayers and decrees and instructions. It takes all my effort to tune out the cacophonic noise of the net and focus on my surroundings.
Twelve cradles fill my mind. Seen through the eye of god-twelve stark examples of all the horrors of nature, of man, of Crack City.
If ignorance is bliss and knowledge is a gift, then my gift is the knowledge of the Rebirth Center and its children-its muties, its sickies, its deformed, diseased and disfigured-Crack City's children, our children. Seen through the eye of god and through my neural implant, then out into the net and into everyone's homes.
Through the neural net and into the minds and souls of everyone in Crack City-the citizens and cyber-sluts, the workers and bosses, the mothers and the fathers, priests and politicians. Everyone from the Red Ring all the way up to the Elite on 24-G suddenly stop what they are doing, sit bolt upright, awake in horror, close their eyes and open their minds, take pause, reconsider, swallow hard, reflect, fall silent, understand-as visions of the sugarplums dance through their heads.--
Jeffrey Thomas
CHAPEL
“YOU WANT TV tonight, honey?” A small gray-haired woman with a clipboard came walking into Devin’s room so quickly that it startled her. She had been gazing out the plate glass window which ran along one wall.
“Yeah…sure,” Devin said.
The woman inserted a key into the small color television suspended from its bracket, swivelled it so that the set was within Devin’s reach. “Watch a few Christmas specials, honey; take your mind off.”
“You work on Christmas eve, huh?” Devin ask
ed with very little interest.
“My kids are grown and moved away, and my folks and brother are dead. I have one son right over in New Hampshire but he can’t come to see his mother until tomorrow night. He isn’t even married…but he chooses to be with his girlfriend’s family.”
Don’t complain about your son, Devin thought. At least yours is still alive.
“How much is that?” With a small groan she reached for her purse. The woman told her, and Devin counted out five dollars. “Expensive.”
“Well, there are four pay-per-view movies on every day, honey.” While the woman made notations on her clipboard Devin turned the dial through the small offering of stations. The woman said, “When I get home tonight I’ll watch the midnight mass. You should, too, hon…it will make you feel more at peace, y’know?”
I doubt that, Devin thought, so devout an atheist that she doubted even the historical existence of Christ, let alone the son of God part. “What is this?” she asked, coming to one channel. “Is this where they show the mass?”
The woman leaned over Devin to peek. “Oh no, I mean on regular channel Five. That’s hospital channel Eight—Chapel. That’s the chapel right here in the hospital. Right down at the end of maternity, here, past the cafeteria. They’ll have a service tomorrow, but not tonight.”
“Five dollars, and one out of what—eight? ten?—stations is a security camera view of an empty church.” Devin snorted a tired little laugh.
“Chapel,” the woman corrected her. She clicked her pen point in. “A lot of people who can’t get out of bed rely on Chapel, honey. It gives them comfort.”
To be so simple a soul, Devin thought. She smiled at the woman. “Merry Christmas. Nice to talk to someone. You seem to be the only person working tonight.”
The woman drew closer conspiratorially. “Don’t get sick on a weekend or Christmas eve, hon. I feel bad for you that tonight it’s both. Not even a room-mate, huh? What are you in for, honey?”
“My baby died.”
“Aww. Oh, poor kid. I had a miscarriage once. How far along? Few months?”
“Yeah. Few.”
“It’s hard, honey, but it’s God’s will. We don’t understand His plan, but…maybe the baby wasn’t forming right. Most miscarriages are because of that. Or maybe he would have died some terrible way when he was older, and God spared him worse. It’s a mystery.”
“Yeah.”
The woman squeezed Devin’s foot through the blanket. “Be tough, hon. And merry Christmas.”
“Thanks.”
The woman took Devin’s hand and pushed her five dollars back into it. She winked, and left the room at that same hurried pace. Devin almost felt the urge to call her back, and a moment later she began to sob quietly but heavily, as if she had been abandoned. She felt not only physically hollowed out inside, with her baby gone, but that her very spirit had been hollowed out as well.
Few months? No. Devin had been full term. Her due date had been next Tuesday.
Intrauterine strangulation. Her child had been killed with his very own life line. Not even two weeks before, a nurse practitioner upon examining Devin had told her everything was okay. The baby’s heart had sounded strong. Devin had heard it herself. “Slow,” the nurse had said. “Could be a boy.” She had been right. Devin had picked the name Christopher, if it were to be a boy.
Should she call Christopher’s father? Peter was way out in sunny California these days. He didn’t even know that she’d been pregnant. First the good news…now the bad news. But to Peter, which would be the good news and which the bad news? Would the death of his son be a tragedy, or a relief?
How could Devin know, when she had struggled with such questions herself these past months? Was it a folly, going through with this pregnancy? Was this really what she wanted…to be a single mother?
Maybe I should have had an abortion after all, Devin thought now. It would have been the same result. Only, she wouldn’t have had to go through twelve hours of labor had he only been two months old. Twelve hours of agony. Women coped with the pain because they knew there was a reward at the end. But Devin had suffered those many long hours already knowing that in the end only a different kind of agony would be her prize.
I’m sorry, Christopher, she thought. I should have killed you a long time ago. I would have saved us both the pain…
She couldn’t afford a plot for him, a coffin. Some people did that. But in her customer service job she made barely enough to scratch by. What would they do with him? She had to ask them…but at the same time she didn’t want to know.
She had held him. They encouraged that, thought it helped with the coping. His face had looked so tired, so unhappy, as if he had merely been disturbed from his peaceful slumber within. Devin didn’t think it helped her to have seen him. She wished she had never seen how beautiful he was. Had never smelled his wispy fine hair, making a spiral on the back of his head as if God had left his thumb print there.
Keep Your hands off my kid, asshole, Devin thought, unbeliever though she was. You condemned my son and hung him. Even if I did believe in You, I’m through believing now.
How could that stupid old woman believe? How could she think that Devin could find comfort in the empty dronings of some sexually repressed priest? “God’s will.” Devin would have resented the woman for that, if she weren’t feeling so very tired. Tired and unhappy. Just like Christopher.
* * *
How often did it actually snow on Christmas eve? Well, it was snowing out there now, but she was in here. Not home. But what was home these days? Peter long gone. Her father dead and her mother remarried to that dick Phil, both in Florida for the winter. She hadn’t called her mother. Didn’t want to spoil her holiday. Didn’t want to talk about Christopher. This was her private ordeal. She was glad all the doctors were gone, all the nurses inattentive. She wanted to be alone. Still, she saw colored lights glowing out there beyond the dozing dark parking lot with its few cars, shrouded like old furniture. There were children in those homes, dreaming of the morning.
She missed that stupid little TV lady. TV. That’s what she needed—distraction. Hopefully something really mindless; a Kung Fu flick, a Godzilla movie. She pulled the hovering set down closer to her, turned up the volume a bit. Six-twenty; early enough for some dumb old Christmas cartoon, maybe. Ah; on the special movie station they were playing a Christmas movie starring that redneck Ernest guy. Perfect.
A nurse brought dinner. It was better than she would have thought. Another nurse came to read her blood pressure, take her temperature. Devin told her she was fine, just to get rid of her, but afterwards regretted that she’d forgotten to ask what would be done with her baby. She considered buzzing, decided not to. She still wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She hadn’t wanted to know what became of her cat Sting last year after he had to be put to sleep. If only she had him to come home to. Not even that…
After the Ernest movie, Devin clicked through the channels again, and paused out of mild curiosity when she reached channel Eight. Taped religious music played softly as a background to the one static camera angle of the St. Andrew’s Hospital chapel. The camera was apparently close to the ceiling, pointing down toward the altar. No lights were on in the chapel, but for one candle just to the left edge of the screen, its glow more visible than the flame itself. The scene was so dim, so grainy, that Devin watched it a few moments if only to discern what she was seeing. She saw the first two or three pews at the bottom of the screen but had no idea how many there might be altogether. An aisle between them led to a slightly raised dais, where a block shape must have been the draped altar table. In back of that were three thrones, as Devin thought of them, the one behind the table particularly tall. That was all she could be sure of. There seemed to be a podium set off to one side and a door in the corner, but it was just too murky. It was as lonely a place as this hospital room with its one occupied bed.
Though she was not religious, and though her musical tastes ra
n more toward The Cure, Devin liked Gregorian chants and medieval music, so the background of very old Christmas music was agreeable to her. She left Chapel on while pulling toward herself a rumpled woman’s magazine someone had left in the top drawer of her side chest.
* * *
Devin awoke to silence. A glance to the wall clock; it was ten-fifty. She’d slept for hours, but given her day, she was surprised it hadn’t been longer. The lack of music finally registered, and she looked to the TV. Chapel was still on, but the taped music had ceased. No sound came from the television.
Off down the hall somewhere, a baby cried. This was postpartum recovery, and a woman must have had her baby brought to her for nursing. The nursery was down the hall, but the babies in there were few tonight and quiet behind their glass wall. Devin was glad for that.
Out the window, the snow had become thick, muffling the world under a caul.
Devin was thirsty, and buzzed the nurse’s station. No reply after five minutes. She didn’t ring it again, reluctant to spoil their Christmas eve down there. If she got thirsty enough there was a bathroom in here, although she knew getting out of bed was discouraged.
She switched through the TV channels. Jimmy Stewart was praising Clarence. A stupid dating game of wall-to-wall innuendoes. On the movie channel, Dances With Wolves, which she’d already seen twice. Peter looked like a prematurely bald Kevin Costner. Dating Peter was dances with werewolves, she reflected.
Searching, she passed channel Eight again, on to channel Nine, but she switched abruptly back.
Was that a person seated in the front pew, on the left?
Devin frowned. Yes, had to be, though the dark shape’s stationary pose didn’t help her much. Some old patient gone into the chapel for a bit of comfort? Must be. It looked as though the person was a woman wearing a kerchief on her head…unless that was a nun’s habit.
Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology Page 79
