His friends knew theirs, too, of course. Akiva’s parents had sat down with him over freshly-baked chocolate cake, told him very solemnly while patting his hand, then stiffly hugged him, exactly as the family therapist had suggested. The whole performance had scarred Akiva for life, ensuring years of future business for the therapist—and—Akiva often thought darkly, if illogically—probably causing his prostate to act up. Resolved had heard it from his big sister, who, incidentally, was going to drown, one of those inconveniently vague forecasts that were impossible to prepare for. They hadn’t believed Cotton until he’d shown them the certificate, but from that point on they’d had to acknowledge that he was their king.
“How do you think it’ll happen?” Resolved whispered one day during free period. “You don’t even know how to use a knife, do you?”
“Yeah, well, that’s why he dies, right?” said Akiva.
Cotton shrugged. They’d had this discussion before. “They say you shouldn’t try to guess. There’s basically no way to know until the big day.”
Resolved pressed on. “Yeah, but why’re you in prison in the first place? Are you going to kill someone? Rob a bank?” A few students at the neighboring tables glanced disapprovingly at them. Raised voices were not encouraged during free period, or in general.
“Maybe I don’t do anything,” whispered Cotton, warming to the subject despite himself. “Maybe I’m wrongly convicted of a crime I didn’t commit.” This scenario was one of several current personal favorites, although there were times when the idea of a brutal crime spree held more satisfaction for a growing boy.
“Maybe you’re not a prisoner,” said Akiva. “Maybe you’re a guard who tries to break up the fight. Or one of those guys, you know, who goes in to teach the prisoners how to weave baskets or something.”
“Or a priest,” suggested Resolved.
“Maybe,” said Cotton. They were sixteen, and supposedly their futures still lay shrouded in glowing promise, but Cotton was pretty sure he could make out the dim but unmistakable outline of an upper-echelon position at one of the major accounting firms. He was doing very well in pre-calc and statistics that year. Whether he liked it or not, some things didn’t need to be printed out on a magic machine to be inevitable.
“Mine’s not so bad, you know,” said Resolved, hoping against hope to talk about his own death for once. “Killed on the operating table. I’ll just go in my sleep.”
“If you think about it, though,” said Akiva slowly, “that one’s really the worst. I mean, you already know it’s going to happen.”
“So?”
“So that means one of these days, you’re going to go in for a coronary bypass, and you’ll have to let them put you under and everything…knowing that you’ll never come out.”
Resolved stared, his lips parting silently. He was not an imaginative boy, and he’d never thought too vividly about the final reward that fate and the death machine had reserved for him. Now unpleasantly precise details were suggesting themselves. From the back of his throat emerged a faint whimper.
“Probably still beats prostate cancer,” said Cotton brightly, which didn’t make anyone feel better.
“I wish we all had prison knife fight,” said Resolved. It was a thought they’d all shared many times over the past few years, but this was the first time one of them had come out and said it.
“It’ll really hurt, though,” said Cotton, in a last-ditch effort to patch things up. “I mean, even before the stab that kills me, I bet I’ll get cut pretty badly.”
“Yeah,” said Akiva, “but at least we’d all be headed for the same place. We’ve been together since kindergarten, and now you’re on your way to prison.”
“We’d all go out together,” said Resolved dreamily, the rusty gears within his skull grinding slowly to life.
Cotton looked at him. “Stabbing each other?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,” sighed Akiva.
The bell rang. They didn’t move. One of the monitors gave them a meaningful look, which they ignored.
“I dunno,” said Cotton. “I mean, my parents are probably dying in a car crash together, and they don’t seem too happy about it.”
Akiva brightened. “Hey, maybe that’s what you go to prison for!”
“Huh?”
“Involuntary manslaughter.” Unlike Resolved, Akiva had a healthy and active imagination. He’d won creative-writing prizes. “You’re drunk behind the wheel, and your parents are in the back seat, and then you drive the car off a bridge and kill them.”
Cotton rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and maybe Resolved’s sister’s riding shotgun and that’s how she gets it, too.”
“It could happen!”
“What’s that about my sister?” said Resolved, the eternal bronze medallist of the trio.
“That’s not going to happen,” said Cotton, gathering his books. A mood had been shattered.
“How do you…” Akiva frowned. “Don’t tell me your parents already thought of it.”
Cotton slung his backpack over his shoulder. “They won’t get in the car if I’m driving.”
College admissions rolled around, and Cotton started getting a lot of thin envelopes and not many fat envelopes. His parents glowered at the world. “It’s his medical records,” said Mr. Weathington-Beech. “The school passes them on.”
“Can we discuss this later?” snipped Mrs. Weathington-Beech. “We just had a nice dinner.”
“You don’t have to talk in code, you know,” said Cotton. “I know I’m dying in a prison knife fight.”
Both parents shot him poisonous looks. They knew he knew, and he knew they knew he knew. They just would have been happier if he’d done the polite thing and pretended he had no idea what they were talking about. Usually he did. Cotton was vaguely uncomfortable about discussing the death machine with his parents; it was almost as icky as the sex talk, and probably for similar reasons.
“It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, is what it is,” muttered Mr. Weathington-Beech.
“Jim…” said Mrs. Weathington-Beech in warning tones. She turned away and started fiercely rearranging the magazines on the coffee table.
Mr. Weathington-Beech slapped down his newspaper. “Well, it’s true. They ostracize a boy like that, how do they expect him to end up?”
Cotton gave up on his Latin homework. “Dad, I’ve gotten three acceptances so far, plus my safety school. It’s not like I’m gonna land in the gutter. I’m just not going to Yale.”
Mrs. Weathington-Beech stifled a sob.
“We have not,” growled Mr. Weathington-Beech, “heard back from Yale.”
“Anyway, you don’t even know that’s what’s going on. Maybe my application just wasn’t that great. I don’t have a lot of extracurriculars.”
“I know what’s going on,” said Mr. Weathington-Beech.
Cotton had to admit he had a point. Even Resolved had managed Cornell.
“So what?” he said. “So I go to one of those little liberal-arts schools. They’re still good schools. Probably a lot more fun that the Ivy League anyway. Akiva’s brother says Harvard sucks, everybody’s stressed out all the time and the freshman classes are all taught by TAs in big—”
“The point,” said Mr. Weathington-Beech, “is that we sent you to Saint Maxwell’s to get you into Tinker Hill. We sent you to Tinker Hill to get you into Howland. And we sent you to Howland to get you into the Big Three, and now the whole damn thing with the—the—”
“The PKF,” suggested Cotton, who thought it had earned an acronym.
“…this thing is screwing up the whole system again.” Mr. Weathington-Beech looked suddenly very sad and tired. “We had everything planned out for you, son. We’ve spent a lot of time and a lot of money. It just doesn’t seem fair.”
“Aw, geez. Dad…”
Mrs. Weathington-Beech spun around, moisture sparkling in the corners of her eyes.
“Cotton,” she said, “when we’re killed,
promise you won’t seek revenge on the driver.”
“Oh, god.” Cotton slammed his Latin book shut. “I’m going out.”
Cotton’s car was new and expensive. It was fast but there was nowhere to take it, so he drove slowly. Besides, his parents were big on safe driving. He drove out the gates of his neighborhood and past the gates of countless other neighborhoods, all tidy and manicured, all dead at night except for the guards reading magazines in their glowing guardhouses. The scenery repeated itself, like a Flintstones cartoon, for miles. The spring air was moist and sugary.
Maybe there was a party somewhere. Maybe there was a football game. Maybe there were guys drinking down at Akiva’s parents’ boat shed. It all melted into the same flat, dark quiet.
After a while, Cotton pulled over and sat on the hood of his car. It was as good a place to stop as any. A dozen yards away, a guard leaned out of a gatehouse window to look him up and down. Cotton felt like a criminal. It wasn’t so bad.
He leaned back and looked up at the stars. He really hoped Yale was going to say no. Some of those little schools looked really good, and if he didn’t go there, he’d do something else. Something better, maybe. Poor Akiva was going to Harvard like his brother, and Resolved…well, to be fair, Resolved probably would’ve been screwed anywhere. But Cotton was going to go where he wanted and do what he liked. That was the funny thing about the death machine. When it cut your future down to that one steel inevitability, it seemed to open up more possibilities than you ever could have imagined.
Cotton smiled shyly at the stars. He was looking forward to prison.
It was going to be fun to be free.
Story by Shaenon K. Garrity
Illustration by Roger Langridge
WHILE TRYING TO SAVE ANOTHER
101
IT WAS ONE OF THOSE DAYS AGAIN. The eight of them travelled by bus, car, or walked to the church. They left coats on hooks and made their way to the basement where coffee, tea, cookies, and Reverend Shamus Brooker waited for them. The underweight clergyman shook Raymond and Krishna’s hands. He hugged Julie. Annabel got a kiss on both cheeks, Hanna a kiss on one cheek. Timothy, Nqobile and Benito were late so they got a nod. The Reverend frowned upon lateness.
“There’ll be one more today,” he warned them. “I told her to come at half past so we’d be able to talk.”
“Couldn’t she join another group?” Timothy objected. It had taken him over a year to get comfortable with the people in the room.
“She’s Iranian.”
“She’ll be more than welcome,” Krishna said firmly. Of course he did. In a few years he’d be killed by a group of skinheads with knives and baseball bats. Racism was a soft spot to say the least. He gave Timothy a challenging glare.
“I was just asking.” Timothy gulped down his coffee and poured a refill.
“Don’t be confrontational,” the Reverend interrupted. “Discomfort any of us feel with the introduction of a new member should be discussed.”
“I don’t have a problem,” Timothy replied.
“I do,” said Julie.
Krishna lashed out at her, assuming her reason was race. She shouted back. Raymond, who had a crush on Julie, joined in. Soon there was lots of yelling and Timothy’s mind wandered. He couldn’t be arsed to join in. He was staring at the doorway thinking about what movie he’d see on the weekend when she arrived. She was head to toe in Goth getup: leather boots with thick soles, a black velvet corset, silver chains, and bracelets dripping off her.
Timothy smiled. “Here comes an awkward silence.”
His prediction turned out to be as accurate as any of the Death Machine’s. Ten seconds later the others realized they were being watched.
“Isma…” Reverend Shamus Brooker’s lips kept moving but no more words came out.
Benito, class clown, came to the rescue. “Whatever your old ED group used to do, forget it. We communicate here by insulting each other.”
“OK. You’re ugly and you smell bad.”
Everyone laughed. Some of them were faking. Timothy wasn’t.
Isma took some tea and cookies and then the real session began.
“My name is Reverend Shamus Brooker and I have two hundred and seventy days left. I’m going to be hit by a car.”
“I am Annabel, cancer, four hundred and ten days.”
“Nqobile. I’m the record holder. Some cunt’s going to shoot me in the head in forty nine days.”
Timothy got up. “One hundred and one here; just like the Dalmatians. I’m going to die in a fire while trying to save another.”
“What?” Isma exclaimed.
“What’s wrong?” asked the Reverend.
She spoke slowly; she was visibly trembling. “I’m going to die in one hundred and one days as well. In a fire.”
100
Later Timothy and Isma sat outside on a bench. Isma’s hands clenched and unclenched, clenched and unclenched.
“Meeting you, it makes me feel like a puppet on strings.”
“It suddenly feels more real, doesn’t it?”
She looked up at the crucifix above the doorway. “He has a sense of humor doesn’t he?”
“When did you find out you were an ED?” Timothy popped a cookie (stolen booty) into his mouth.
“Six years ago after hearing a war hero talk on television. He said to the press that he wasn’t courageous; he admitted he had used a Death Machine and he knew he was going to freeze to death on a mountain. As long as he was posted in a desert, jungle, or urban warzone he felt no fear. When watching that broadcast, I realized for the first time that a forecast could be a gift. I arranged a session. I thought that if I knew how I was going to die I could stop being afraid of everything. I didn’t expect to find out when.”
“ED’s a bitch isn’t it?”
For years many had been sure the only reason no one had changed their fate was Death Machine forecasts were too vague. They were proved wrong when the first Exact Date spat out. For the first time, a man knew not only how he would die, but knew when it would happen. The first ED knew he would die in a bus crash on the 6th of March 2032. He prepared for that day. No matter what happened he would go nowhere near a bus on the 6th. He booked himself on a yacht cruise; no way could a bus crash happen while at sea. A week before his predicted death he was hit by a car and put into a coma. On the 6th the hospital was forced to transfer him to a private clinic. En route, a bus slammed into the side of the ambulance.
“How about you, how did you find out?”
“British Airways has all prospective pilots do a compulsory forecast just in case the Death Machine spits out ‘plane crash.’ They told me I couldn’t get the job because I was an ED and I had seven hundred and eight days left. I wish they hadn’t told me. Ignorance was bliss.” Timothy reached into his pocket and retrieved another cookie. “You want one?”
“No thanks. I’m on a diet.”
Timothy’s right eyebrow rose.
“I know. I’ll be dead in a hundred and one days. Why the fuck am I dieting?”
Timothy glanced at his watch. “A hundred days now.”
“I just thought of something. You’re not going to die in a plane crash. Why didn’t you get the British Airways job?”
“No one would insure me because I only had two years of life left.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“Of course it is; prejudice is just a reality.”
Isma stuck her hand into Timothy’s jacket pocket, an action that struck him as surprisingly intimate. She fished out a cookie and took a tiny nibble, a bird bite. “I was part of an Arab student association in Uni,” she said. “Every week we met and complained about the way we were discriminated against and treated like we weren’t real British citizens. That made it hurt all the more when they found out I was an ED and started treating me differently. Not that they called me names or anything like that. They just started tip-toeing around me.”
No one knew why exactly, but for ever
y thousand people who used a Death Machine, it only spat out an Exact Date for two or three.
“I hate the bloody pity,” Timothy said.
“I had an abortion last year,” Isma said suddenly. “I wouldn’t have lived to see my child’s first birthday.”
“I…I don’t know what to say.”
“I wanted to mention it in there but the reverend…I wanted him to like me.”
“Shamus isn’t a cliché. He doesn’t judge.”
“I’m glad I didn’t. It feels easier to just tell you. It’s weird, but I feel connected to you.”
Timothy smiled humorlessly, “Linked by fate and all that.”
“How can you be cynical about fate, knowing what you do? Isn’t that proof enough?”
“I don’t believe in fate, God or anything. It’s all random. Sure, the Death Machine can punch a hole through time and can predict the result of the randomness. That doesn’t make it any less random.”
“So there’s no God, no life after death?”
“Zip.”
“How can you stand living like that?”
“Same as you, one day at a time. One hundred now, ninety-nine tomorrow.”
“Look at me,” Isma said.
He turned and their faces were only a few inches apart. “Do you think we’ll be together?”
He shrugged.
“Don’t do that.” She sounded angry. “I can tell your ‘I don’t care’ stuff is an act.”
He almost lashed out with a “fuck you” but it was harder to do so while staring into her eyes. It was too dark to see their colour. “I don’t want to die alone.”
“Me neither.”
97
“Do you ever think we’re trying to force something into existence,” Timothy said to her three days later. They were on the grass at Piccadilly Gardens. It was loud so they were speaking with raised voices.
Machine of Death Page 31
