He glared up at the ceiling. Take that, God.
The only person who ever called anymore was Brenda, and more often than not, he let the machine answer it. He couldn’t stand to look at her face on the vidscreen, all wrinkles and white hair. Like so many others, she’d never taken the treatments. She’d said that she’d had an epiphany about the naturalness of mortality, whatever that meant. Every so often, he’d have an actual conversation with her—just often enough to keep his connection to the college open. Sometimes she’d ask to visit, but he always turned her down. She’d probably want to touch him. He hadn’t touched anyone in nearly a decade. It kept him clean. And it kept him from wanting to be touched some more.
Still, he was going to have to figure out how to befriend a younger colleague of hers soon. She didn’t look like she’d be around much longer.
The house-wide computer chimed at him as he fingered the surgical steel shunt he’d had implanted in his forearm to facilitate his weekly blood tests. He would only trust the nanobots so far, so he liked to have a look for himself. The shunt was slightly sore to the touch. He’d need to check for infection. The computer’s soothing female voice said, “News story matching your pre-programmed search parameters found.”
“Display,” Alex said, and turned to the nearest wall.
The living room came alive with text. “Pope Weighs in on Human Cryogenics,” the headline read.
Alex felt a heady rush of adrenaline pour through his veins. This was it. The news he’d been waiting for these so many years. He sat down on his hard plastic couch and wiped his sweaty palms on his organic cotton pants, then let out a pent-up breath and started reading.
“Today, Pope Santiago I issued a papal bull on the status of the souls of cryogenically frozen humans,” the article read. “‘While the Church decries those who would play God in such a fashion,’ he wrote, ‘those who are cryogenically frozen before death in a manner that allows for revivification retain possession of their souls throughout their time in suspension. Their souls are only delivered to the afterlife upon their natural death.’”
Alex’s nanobot-littered blood thundered triumphantly in his ears, and he pressed shaking fingertips to his lips. Oh, this was good news. Such good news. Cryogenics would protect him. With a sufficiently redundant power system, a well-maintained, well-armored cryogenic chamber could keep him safe from disease and disaster indefinitely. He’d need to set up his investments so they’d be crisis-proof, but that could be arranged. Perhaps he could stipulate that he be awoken every twenty years, and additionally any time there was a financial crisis. The cryogenic technology still needed a decade or two for scientists to iron out all its wrinkles, so that gave him plenty of time to work out the details. And to pump some of his savings into the most promising cryogenic research project so he’d be first in line to use it once it had been proven safe. Maybe he’d even volunteer for phase three testing.
He felt sweat trickle down his temple and patted it dry with his cuff. If only his house’s temperature regulation system wouldn’t keep malfunctioning. He pulled the small nanobot monitor from his hip and checked his temperature. 98.6 degrees. Exactly what it should be. And he knew he was disease-free, at least as of this morning’s nanobot reports, so it clearly wasn’t his body’s fault that he was so hot. He’d have to see if he could get someone new to come out and fix the heater. The last repair person had told him everything was working fine. “Computer,” he said, “lower house temperature by another degree.”
“Temperature lowered. It is now forty-one degrees Fahrenheit.”
There was no way this was forty-one degrees. Alex rose and shuffled slowly toward his bedroom to change into a short-sleeved shirt, keeping one blue-fingered hand carefully on the wall railing at all times. He didn’t bother to look out the frost-covered window at the beautiful sunny day, at the yard he’d once imagined Cassie and their children in. He hardly ever thought about her anymore. She was unimportant, a footnote. All that mattered now was keeping at least one step ahead of God at all times.
Now more than ever, Alex knew just how important it was to follow his rules. If he stayed locked in his house, if he monitored his health vigilantly, if he spent all his spare time poring through medical journals looking for new breakthroughs, if he maintained his daily low-impact exercise and blood tests, if he ate only healthy foods and kept his caloric intake low, if he moved slowly and carefully to avoid injury, if he avoided all physical contact with any living being, then he’d make it. And then he’d be able to spend eternity so safe that he wouldn’t even have his worries to trouble him. Just blissful nothingness in the Heaven of his choosing.
The battle wasn’t over, but it was clear that he was winning.
God couldn’t touch him anymore.
If only it weren’t so damned hot.
Notes on “Immortal Sin”
This story is the direct result of my Catholic upbringing. I was not built to be a Catholic. I was the kind of child that took everything literally, and was very good at getting into shame spirals. I imagined God watching me constantly, disapprovingly, taking notes on every little bad thing I did so as to lengthen my inevitable time in Purgatory. Thankfully, logic prevailed, I became an atheist at age twelve, and got out from under that weight. But if I hadn’t, I could have eventually become as paranoid as the protagonist of this piece. It was surprisingly therapeutic to write this. The medical details for this piece also come from my pathologist friend, Dr. Kristin Fiebelkorn.
Flood
CALLIE NUMBS BOTH WRISTS TO the bone before slicing deep into each one with the cutter, its sonic waves effortlessly singing through the skin and veins, and as she watches her blood slip out, she wonders how people did this in the old days. How had they kept their hands steady through the pain as they’d ripped through their flesh with sharpened metal? But then again, the end came quicker back then—back when they had water. Tubs of it, warm and wonderful, that people could soak in, the heat coaxing the blood from their open veins.
She props her feet up against the wall to make the blood flow faster. She should be getting cold by now, but the blood warms her skin, sticky and sweet. Her feet go numb, almost as numb as her hands. If she can just keep her legs propped up, if she can just keep the blood flowing, then soon she’ll be away from this arid existence and on to an afterlife where she’ll finally learn to swim.
The door to her dressing room opens, and her manager’s narrow frame casts a shadow across her body. He clucks his tongue. “Is it high tide already? I thought the full moon was tomorrow night.”
She moans and looks away. “I didn’t think you’d be checking up on me so soon.”
He actually laughs. “Please. You like to be caught. You’d wait to slit your wrists at home otherwise. Come on, let’s clean you up for the show. I’ll have your press agent release a statement. The stadium’s been sold out for months, but maybe this can drive up the online viewers.”
Her cutter is taken away, and a laser is produced to close her veins and seal up the rents in her flesh. Jeremy, her manager, has a roadie take her to the sonics to get cleaned up, and when she gets back to the dressing room, he tells her that his request for plasma has been denied. “You could trade some water rations for it, but—”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
She turns to the mirror and stares at her too-pale face. “I can’t do it tonight. I’m too weak.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,” Jeremy says. “We’re putting a divan on the stage. All you need to do is lie there and moan in tune. Now get your game face on and get out there.”
He storms out, just like he did last time, and the time before, and the ten times before. The roadie strokes Callie’s close-cropped hair and asks, “Do you need any help?”
“No, I’ve got it.”
The roadie takes the laser with her as she leaves the dressing room.
And Callie is alone with her costumes and her wigs and her paints. She
picks up a makeup brush, stares at herself in the mirror with eyes as green as the lost seas, and begins to paint waves on her sunken cheeks.
In half an hour, she walks out, transformed, and nods to the crew.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Straight from the Albany Protectorate, let’s give a warm Providence welcome to Undine!”
The lights come up, and she’s resplendent in water tones on her blue divan, where she spends the next ninety minutes whispering out love songs for forgotten oceans. Between numbers, the crowd reverently passes tiny plastic water bottles up to the stage. They only contain an inch of water each, maybe less, but they’re precious gifts, dribbed and drabbed from their daily rations.
For that ninety minutes, the world is once again wet.
And then the lights go out, and Undine again becomes Callie—small, parched, and alone. The roadies collect all of the offerings and help Callie off the stage. There is a crush of groupies waiting for her outside her dressing room, some waving full daily ration bottles as enticement, and she hesitates, her body screaming out for more water. But she has given all she can for one night. She has nothing left to trade. So she shakes her head and goes into the dressing room, alone, as always.
Callie crawls onto the sofa, nestles the bottles to her bosom, pulls a blanket around her, and dreams of floods.
* * * *
“How dare you?”
She opens her eyes to see the familiar argument brewing between her brother and her manager.
Jeremy shrugs expansively and says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“This happens every time. You can’t leave her alone at high tide. She needs protection.”
“From who, herself?”
“Yes.”
“Look, Owen, your twin is a grown woman. She doesn’t need a babysitter. If she wants to slice her wrists open—”
Her brother jabs a finger into her manager’s chest so hard that she can hear it thunk. “You encourage her. You like the publicity. You’re a fiend, Jeremy. An utter fiend.”
Callie props herself up on one elbow, the tiny bottles sliding down her chest and puddling by her side. “Owen, leave Jeremy alone.”
Owen shoots the manager one last glare, then snarls, “Get out.”
Jeremy raises his hands in mock surrender and leaves.
And Owen sits down at Callie’s hip, carefully avoiding all the precious plastic bottles, recycled from the desolate world outside. Some once held fizzy drinks, some cough syrup, still others carried tiny amounts of liquor on the airplanes that once criss-crossed the sky. They’re all relics of a world long gone, recycled to keep this world alive.
Owen clasps her hands tightly and stares down at her wrists, the new scars standing out vividly against the old. “You have to stop playing full moon shows,” he says.
“I need to play with the tides. You know that.”
He presses her palms together, his own hands cradling hers. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here last night. There was a sandstorm. They canceled my train. I would have met you in Albany and come out here with you, but you know how work is.”
“Hey, I understand.” She kisses his fingertips. “Your work’s important.” Owen is part of a team of scientists working to find a way to restart the manufacturing economy without using water, or at the very least, without losing any. Their ultimate goal is to get the space program back online so they can bring back water from other solar bodies to replenish the oceans. Water is ripe for the taking on the Moon, Mars, and the comets. Many think this project is Earth’s only hope.
Owen stands and pulls Callie to her feet along with him. “Come on. Let’s take you home.”
“Hold on,” she says, and scoops up all of the bottles, cradling them in her arms like the baby she will never be allowed to have. Some of the groupies must have left their ration bottles for her, because there’s a small stash of them by the door. Callie carefully collects them all and places them in an old hard-sided suitcase.
“More for the tub?” Owen asks.
“Mm hmm.”
“Do you have any grand plans for it, or—”
“Not particularly.” She knows she shouldn’t lie to her brother. They’ve never kept secrets from each other. But if he knew the thoughts she was entertaining, he’d try to stop her. And between full moons, the thoughts she is entertaining are all that keep her alive.
Owen gestures at the bulging suitcase and asks, “How are you going to get all of that through customs?”
Callie smiles for the first time in days. “Sometimes, it’s good to be a celebrity.”
* * * *
She tries not to look out the window as the train makes the desolate journey from Providence to Albany, but she can’t help it. Her vision is magnetically drawn to the reality that so horrifies her. The solar-powered train races through ghost town after ghost town, empty buildings jutting starkly into the dusty sky, the tracks following a coast that no longer exists. Every so often, they get close enough to it that she can see what was once the seabed, and Callie bites back tears and turns away. Wasting water is not the way to mourn the oceans.
Her brother looks up from his reader and says, “It’s times like this that I understand the Angry Earthers.”
Callie clasps her scarred wrists tightly against her chest. “You can’t.”
Owen stares out the window as they pass through what was once New London. “I know there has to be a scientific explanation, but—”
“You just need to keep looking,” Callie says. “You’ll find it.”
Owen shakes his head and looks back down at his reader.
He can’t believe in the Angry Earth Theory. Not Owen. He’s a scientist. He can’t believe that the planet is a sentient being that’s trying to wipe out humanity by taking away all of the water. If even the scientists are entertaining such quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo, then what hope can people like her have?
Callie grabs his forearm with one thin-boned hand. “You’re just saying that, right?”
He opens his mouth, sighs, then says, “Of course I don’t believe that. The view…” He waves his hand at the window. “I just get depressed sometimes. We’ve been hitting some…snags on the project. It’s enough to make you believe in the supernatural.”
“We’ll get the water back.”
“Some day, yes.” He smiles at Callie, plucking her hand from his arm and clasping it tightly. “You just need to hang in there, sis. No more high tide melodrama, okay? I mean it this time.”
“I’ll try.”
His smile fades. “Will you? Really?”
Callie nods and looks out the window again. She’ll try, but she can’t promise more than that.
The train turns north for Albany, and the desolation is magnified as they leave the corridor of cities. There is just wind-swept dust, stark terrain, and the occasional storm of debris as the clutter of the former oceans makes its way across land. Bleached-out bath toys bounce off of the train’s windows in a rubbery hail, and Callie shrinks back into her brother’s arms until the assault ends. And then there is nothing again. No trees, no farm houses, nothing but dust.
They pull into the Albany station, wait for the moisturelock to dock with the train, and debark onto the waiting solar bus. It takes them back to the Protectorate—a massive series of vapor-tight bunkers constructed when the water started to vanish. They are all that saved the people inside and their hoarded water from the thirsty masses. All water in the Protectorate is recycled, even the precious water in the air. Not a single puff of vapor is allowed to escape. At least, not on purpose. No system is perfect. Every year, just like in every other hab, a little more water is lost, and there is no way to replenish it.
Callie was born in the bunkers, just eleven minutes after her brother, just moments before the news reports that the very last of the water had vanished. By the time Callie was born, the riots had ended, the arsenals were empty, the governments had long collapsed, and not a creature outside the bunkered cit
ies was left alive. Callie never had to learn to adjust to this dry world. As long as she can remember, she has known how to operate a moisturelock, how to monitor her water consumption to the milliliter, how to identify and repair breaches in the vapor systems, how to keep clean with sonics and chemical scrubs.
But it has never felt natural.
She has never understood why she is so profoundly tidal, why she feels the lost oceans with every cell of her body. Doctors have tried to write it off as depression, or an overactive imagination, or intense self-involvement, but she knows they’re all wrong. She is simply suffering from hydrophilia in the middle of a desert world.
* * * *
“I’ve got a great video idea,” her manager is saying. She has him on linkup. “The Marianas Trench. You wouldn’t actually be there, of course. It’s too dangerous, never mind the fact that no one wants to see you sing in a still suit. But it’d be a hell of a backdrop for Undine, don’t you think?”
“Jeremy, no.” She glares at him from the sofa in her one-room apartment. It is a big room—a corner unit with small, high windows, luxurious for this impoverished world. Most people live in glorified cells clustered around water rationing stations. This is yet another perk of celebrity that she is happy to accept.
“Trust me, it’ll be perfect. You’ll need a new song for it, though.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Come on. You need to capitalize on your image. Think big, Callie. The fans will eat it up.”
She rises to her feet and advances to the screen. “I will not exploit the oceans!”
Jeremy stares at her as if she is a child. “Callie, you can’t exploit something that hasn’t existed for thirty years.”
Unwelcome Bodies Page 6
