Pills and Starships

by Lydia Millet

  While we were waiting there, watching other families slip into the water ahead of us and seeing their snorkel tubes spread out like miniature periscopes on the surface of the water, my father pointed up into the waxy green tree canopy. There were bright-colored birds there, parrots or something. But one thing struck me, and I could barely believe it hadn’t struck me before.

  “Where’s the Invisinet?” I asked, squinting. “I just realized! It hasn’t been on any of the gardens. Ever since we got here!”

  “Maybe it’s too high up to see,” suggested Sam.

  “Oh no, dears,” said my mother. “They don’t use the Invisinet here. Because the islands are so far out in the middle of the ocean, you see.”

  “No need,” nodded my father, smiling beatifically. “The invasions they’re most afraid of have already happened. Damage already done—in terms of wildlife that flies through the air, anyway. There aren’t too many long-distance migrant birds left, so the residual risk is pretty low. Most of the invasive parasites that still show up are insects, and they actually come off passenger boats just like the one we sailed in on. After all, we’re thousands of miles from nowhere.”

  It was bizarre—animals walking around, or flying, whatever they were doing, just on the loose, completely open to the sky.

  When we finally went in it was great, better than the tank I’d once been in back home, which was strictly an indoor setup. They had real saltwater plants growing, and you could touch them. And there were the usual fake corals, but they looked really real, and along with the robot fish they had some live ones—you could tell because when you swam close to them they flitted away faster than the robots were able to. You’re not supposed to touch robot wildlife because it can wreck them, but their sensors aren’t always perfect and they tend to move sluggishly.

  It was wild down there, the light shining through the water, the creatures swimming beneath, and my parents seemed happier than they’d been in a long time.

  When we got out after our half-hour ended, and were sitting stretched out on one of the decks drying off while my mother went to use the outdoor “convenience station,” Sam took my dad aside. The masseur dude with no name tag was standing nearby, handing out drywipes and putting away people’s masks and fins.

  “You could have more of this,” he said. “Isn’t it great? You could have more of all the things you love. Dad, really. Come on. You don’t have to do it.”

  My father just patted him softly on the shoulder.

  “Son,” he responded, smiling his blissed-out pharmasmile, “much as we might like to, we can’t go out snorkeling.”

  My parents don’t know it yet, but my brother’s gone AWOL.

  That stands for Away Without Leave, in case you didn’t know. It’s an old army term they use when soldiers run off to get a break from the killing.

  Sam’s may or may not be temporary. I’m worried.

  And my parents don’t know about his disappearing act yet because we’re in the middle of Personal Time—they’re off at some kind of healing session—and meanwhile he took off and left me a note. It said he needed more Personal Time than the slots we were given; it said he’d try to be back by evening. But it didn’t promise.

  You’re really, really not supposed to go off-plan. They make that clear in the training, and then they state it again and again inside the Coping Kit—how it’s all about a certain pharmaflow, a certain time-shape of being.

  It’s weird to think I don’t know where he is. In all of our lives, it’s been incredibly rare that I didn’t know exactly what he was doing and his activity location. We always had our personal faces, with GPS trackers and all that, and we were good about updating so our parents wouldn’t worry.

  Plus there was the fact that we were barely allowed outside the complex. Except for special occasions.

  But here there’s no face, not for contracts, and so he’s just gone. He’s just somewhere out there.

  He’s like the birds with no Invisinet.

  When I woke up from my catnap the note was right there on my bed beside me, scrawled hastily on a page torn out of Sam’s own journal—the one they gave him that’s identical to this one I’m writing in. The first thing I did was beat a path to his room to make sure he wasn’t pranking. His journal was there on his bedside table, the opening Day Two page ripped out. Otherwise the notebook was completely blank.

  But I did find, tucked into the back of it, a piece of write-fiber I didn’t recognize, which he’d probably brought from home. At first I ignored it; then, since I found absolutely nothing else in his room that would give me a single clue, I pored over it for a minute or two.

  It contained neatly written lists of numbers—numbers and places. They were big numbers, and the places were countries or cities or regions. I’ll copy a piece of it here:

  Guizhou Province | 500,000 | 3/3

  Mali | 1,300,0008/12 |

  Uttar Pradesh | 8,000,000 | 9/10

  Okay, so I have no earthly idea what this all means. But it goes on like that, a list of places—all somewhere in the poor parts—with big numbers for each, and then fractions, which also might be dates.

  I just tucked it in an inside pocket of my skirt, in case it’s something private or important—in case my parents end up in here, looking to find out what Sam is up to.

  I don’t know why I took it, actually. But I did.

  And now they’re coming back in from their session.

  Tonight it’s just the three of us at dinner.

  My parents didn’t take Sam running off as hard as I thought they would—they didn’t freak out, didn’t cry or pace around or anything. Probably the pharma mood-level.

  But what they did do was call the corp.

  I asked them not to, I said Sam would be back soon, later tonight, probably, and could we just keep it in the family? I showed them the note he left me; I told a white lie and said he’d meant it for “all of us.” But they didn’t even consider my request to keep the whole thing quiet. I mean, not for a single second. They said smoothly that this kind of thing happens, the signs were all there in Sam’s angriness and his rebelling feeling—they actually quoted LaTessa to me.

  And the key way to respond is, my dad said, “We just don’t panic, okay, honey? That’s what service is for. Guiding, receiving, and streamlining. We just need to keep them informed of all developments.”

  His face looked plastic when he said that.

  And then they called it in.

  For some reason, this pissed me off more than other things have. Usually I’m not pissed off, I’m pretty chill most of the time even without the slow-down pharms. But this got to me. More than the decision to buy the contract in the first place, because, I mean, sooner or later their generation always does. But this was something else—it was going too far, I thought, going too far in sneaky increments, it was a piecemeal betrayal of us that had turned a corner, because now, undeniably, they were showing more loyalty to the corporation than to Sam and me.

  It was like: Are you guys corp robots?

  I’ve been thinking about why, and it seems to me it’s plain old fear. They’re afraid of not doing everything the corp says to do in Final Weeks. They’re afraid if they don’t then something will go terribly wrong.

  So here we are waiting for our dinner in the Twilight Lounge, and as my parents drink their cocktails and hold hands and smile, for once I’m the one sulking.

  Sulking and writing in my journal.

  Tonight’s show was called “To the Stars,” and it featured madeup vids of outer space and the life cycle of a star, from birth to supernova. They had facts rolling overhead: the number of stars in the galaxy, the number of galaxies in the universe, the number of years since the Big Bang. How even energy fades and dies—not really dis­appearing, the narrator said, but merely changing forms.

  It was okay, but nothing like “Ancient Oceans.” The ancient oceans kicked way more ass.

  One upside, though, was that tonight�
�s show didn’t make my parents cry. Not a bit.

  The menu tonight is vegetable protein steaks and pan-fried root veggies.

  I’m not too psyched, frankly.

  Wow.

  After dinner, around ten p.m., there was a knock at the door of our suite. Mom and Dad were already in their sleep garments, and their cool-down pharms were making them practically nod off on the couch where they were reading, so I went and opened it.

  First I was relieved, and then I was alarmed.

  Because there was Sam (relief) with a corp worker on each side of him (alarm). These ones had name tags—uniforms and name tags, and faces like the side of our concrete-reinforced cliffs.

  Big guys. Between them Sam looked very small.

  He wore a facial expression that was trying for apology or obedience or something, but behind that I could see another emotion—I don’t know, triumph or pleasure or excitement. His eyes sparkled.

  “We found him on the grounds,” said one of the craggy uniforms. His name tag read, Rory.

  “Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Dad,” muttered Sam.

  “Samson,” said my father, rising belatedly from the sofa.

  “Oh, good,” said my mother, and she stood up too.

  Their response time was long, and I noticed my mom’s brown eye makeup was a bit smeared. I wondered if she’d get all doddering and bleary as the sunset pharms took over. I really hope not.

  “Have you seen the smallgolf course they have?” asked Sam, with childish glee. “It’s so totally cool and awesome!”

  Clearly he was dialing up the kid thing for the benefit of Rory and his colleague. These days not all adults know how kids are supposed to act at different ages; they just don’t have enough experience with the last gen to know what’s normal for age nine compared to, say, age fourteen.

  Of course, Sam hasn’t seemed much like a kid since before he was ten. I’m pretty sure I’d never heard him say cool and awesome anyway, even before then. That’s more the kind of gush I do.

  LaTessa would never have fallen for the idiot disguise since she’d already seen him function at his real mental age. But maybe, I figured, these rock-faced guard types didn’t communicate with the feeling-believing VRs.

  “I didn’t know you liked smallgolf,” said my dad. Instead of instantly seeing through Sam’s kinder­gartner act, as he would have even days ago, he seemed befuddled by the situation.

  “Are you kidding?” replied Sam, and walked over to the sideboard to pour himself some electrolytes. “This course is rad! They have hologram olden-time players, you can play against them. Like famous golfers from the big-course days. There’s a robot man named Tiger!”

  “Let’s make sure there’s no more going off-plan, okay, Samson?” Rory interjected sternly. “It causes inefficiencies. It’s hurtful to your parents and it’s extremely disruptive.”

  “Sorry, guys,” said Sam, but at the same time he shrugged like he was too clueless to fully get the problem.

  “We’ll keep him on a short leash from now on,” said my dad, half-jokingly.

  Then Rory and his colleague did these little head bows and retreated. There was silence after the door clicked closed, with Sam glugging his drink down as though he was dying of thirst.

  “Sam, dear,” said my mother, “we may be on heavier pharma doses than you are, but we’re not completely out of it. Are you really expecting us to believe you took off just to look at a golf course?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Sam again, dropping the little kid façade. “And Nat, sorry to you too. Felt suffocated. I had to get some space.”

  “But you have space,” said my dad. “It’s built into the system! Your own room—even your own balcony! We went over this in training, Sam. The importance of the schedule.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint,” answered Sam, a new stiffness in his voice. “What can I say? My bedroom didn’t feel like space to me. But you know what? Right this minute it’s not looking so bad. Tell you what: I’ll go in there now.”

  And he went. And shut his door behind him.

  My parents looked at each other, my mom sighed, and then they gave me their goodnight hugs and went into the master bedroom to sleep.

  I headed to my own room, but I didn’t go to sleep. I waited. And sure enough, a few minutes later Sam slipped in. No knock. He closed my door softly behind him.

  “The corp mikes the main room,” he whispered. “But not the bedrooms, they don’t have the manpower to listen in everywhere.”

  “Mikes?” I blurted.

  “Shh! They’re sensitive, though. Keep it to a whisper.”

  “Are you saying they—they listen to our family? They listen in to what we say privately? In the suite?”

  “They monitor the microphones if someone goes off-plan,” he whispered, sitting down next to me on the bed. “They don’t bother otherwise. But if you go off-plan you get flagged.”

  “Really,” I said, probably a bit coldly. “Thanks a bunch, then. And how did you find that out?”

  “Keahi told me.”

  “Keahi?”

  “The dude from the massage pool. His name means flames. In Hawaiian.”

  “So you get your top-secret info from a masseur.”

  “He’s not just a masseur,” said Sam, shaking his head. “But listen. My list is gone. You have it, right?”

  I thought about denying it, because I was annoyed at him. But that would be too mean.

  “I have it,” I said, and went to the closet to get it out of the pocket I’d stuffed it in. “I couldn’t make head or tail of it.”

  “Something I’m researching,” he said evasively, and tucked it away. “I’ll tell you if it pans out. Meantime, I need your help. I really do, Nat. This is so important.”

  “My help with what?”

  “First I have to swear you to secrecy.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I mean it, Nat. I’ve never been more serious in my life.”

  He was so close to me I could see the white ends of his eyelashes in the candlelight and a faint orange trace of ’lyte juice on his upper lip. It made me think: He’s still just a kid!

  But I could see how big a deal this was to him. Whatever this was.

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly.

  “We have three hours of Personal Time tomorrow morning. Three whole hours—it’s their final healing session. That’s why it’s so long. It’s the biggest chunk of free time this whole week, and the last one before Goodbye Day. So I want you to come with me. But the rule is, no questions. Not till we’re out of range.”

  “Range?”

  “Away from the hotel. Please, Nat. I’ve never cared about any single thing in my life as much as I care about you coming with me.”

  “But you’ll bring me back here in three hours? You promise? Because I don’t want to upset them. I don’t want to do anything like what you did today, Sam.”

  “We’ll be back,” he nodded.

  So that’s the plan.

  After he left my room I went out onto the balcony. I stood looking up at the constellations and thinking how lame “To the Stars” was compared to the real thing. Then I thought about last night’s show, “Ancient Oceans.” And it occurred to me that, as great as that show was, the real thing was probably a million times greater.

  For a second that scared me. For a split-second I was on the edge of a terrible cliff. I think maybe I got a glimpse of the world how Mom and Dad may see it—this landscape of beauty that’s been lost.

  Then I grabbed hold of the balcony’s railing and I was back in a normal mode again. I concentrated on the solid, familiar feel of the railing against the palms of my hands. I said to myself, there’s history, sure—there’s always going to be history. There always has been, there always will be. Things are always changing. And sure, a lot of that old world is gone. But leaving is what alive things do.

  Out there among the stars there are probably a million worlds being born and dying. Just like people
used to be—just like the animals were. Before the being-born part stopped.

  This is just one world, I thought. It’s not all of them. It’s not all that there is.

  I thought of the butterfly Jean wanted us to be, all flitting between the flowers on its light feathery wings, blah blah. Okay, the way she said it to us was corpspeak and weak. But still, I can’t deny she has a point. Things die, things go extinct, that much is true, it’s just the price of living. Only a rock stays the same.

  And who would want to be a rock?

  Boring.

  It’s normal, I said to myself. If you’re not a rock you’re lucky. But if you’re not a rock you also have to pay for it.

  DAY THREE

  REMEMBERING & APPRECIATING

  Theme of the Day: Lasting Togetherness

  I’m up early today, so early the others are still sleeping. I brought this journal with me to a bench on the cliffwalk.

  Some of the benches have awnings and I chose one of them. You can only see the ocean from where I’m sitting—I mean if you look straight ahead there’s nothing but blue over the line of tufty grass at the edge of the cliff—but if you walk closer to the edge and peer down you can make out the concrete and metal architecture of the seawall. I wish I hadn’t looked over; I wish I still had the illusion that the bluffs were natural. Because it’s nice: hummingbirds buzz around, diving into the red flowers and feeders.

  The sun’s just come up and I can see boats sailing in. Passenger-boats are powered by wind and sun, but not the corp and military transport boats—some of those use massive batteries and have no sails at all. They’re big and stay far off the coasts, mostly, dispatching pontoon boats to bring in batches of supplies. On the way over, my dad told me about big luxury ships they used to have for people to vacate in—giant and white and towering like miniature cities. They had really bad carbon footprints, them and the jet planes and the fossil-fuel cars.