The Waning Age

by S. E. Grove

  “Never cause more injury than you have to.”

  I brought the baton down on the tensed neck muscles of the first boy and popped open the can of mace that had found its way from my bag into my other hand. I sprayed the lunger in the face.

  “Find the weakest spot that will yield the most effective nonfatal damage.”

  The old lady was hunched down in her seat, but she was watching us with wide eyes. Bad Lipstick dove toward me with the switchblade out in front of her. I dodged sideways, bumping the boy who was wailing about the mace. Then I brought the baton down on the girl’s back as she was trying to stop herself from falling against the empty seats.

  The train started slowing down.

  “You are always stronger defending than attacking.”

  That might be so, Officer Gao, but I needed another twenty seconds for the train doors to open. Before the boy who was still standing could try to get in another swing, I closed my fist around the little mace can and punched him in the stomach.

  “Come on,” I said to the old lady, hurriedly dumping mace and baton into my bag. I took her by the arm and she scurried along with me to the doors.

  The two Fish who didn’t have mace in their eyes were recovering. I figured they would have no problem following us. The train stopped. After an interminable wait, the doors opened. We spilled out onto the platform and I gave the old lady a gentle push. “Go tell the transit police. Be quick.”

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice strained, and she stumbled off toward the window of the transit police office.

  I waited a moment longer to see what the Fish were doing. They had put themselves back together, sort of, and they were careening toward the open BART doors. I pulled the strap of my bag tight against my shoulder and started running.

  As I took the steps up to the overpass I thanked myself silently for the crepe-soled shoes. But the bag was annoying. It swung out even with the strap pulled tight, so I hugged it close like a little pillow and kept running. I passed over to the other side of the tracks, where a train heading back downtown was approaching. That was lucky. Waiting around on the platform for a train would have been awkward. I didn’t have that much mace. The alarm in the station went off as I hit the platform. So the old bird had actually gone to the transit police. That was very decent of her.

  The train pulled in and I shot toward the nearest car. I glanced up to see how far behind me the Fish were, wondering if they would catch the same train. They would. I turned away and jogged through the car. “Fish,” I called out, in case the passengers hadn’t heard the station alarm. It was only fair to warn them. “Three Fish coming your way.” A few people managed to dive out of the car doors before they closed. The rest plastered themselves into their chairs, leaving the aisle free.

  I slid out the rear end of the car and through the gangway into the next one as the train started moving. I could see through the grimy window that the three Fish were aboard and, surprisingly, they were not getting distracted by all the cowering people around them. They were looking for me. And they were being very thorough. Was I under a seat or curled up under that big hat? Better check.

  I kept going and didn’t issue any more warnings, since the Fish seemed so focused in their pursuit. We pulled into the Civic Center. A handful of people climbed in and out. I thought to myself wryly that some help from the Landmark guest with the spindle legs would have been really, really useful right then. It’s always about timing. I zeroed in on a guy who looked similar, not that he physically resembled Spindle Legs, because he had black hair and scruff and delicate eyebrows, but he was taking similar synaffs and dropping his eyes at me in a similar lazy-but-interested way. Letting a big, fake smile of the kind I can’t stand expand over my face, I walked over to him. He looked startled and pleased. I leaned in close and got up on my tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “Would you help me change my clothes?” I smiled up at him like this was an amazing and fun idea.

  He blinked. “Sure.”

  I took off my raincoat and held it up. “Make a little screen for me?”

  He smiled, starting to see what the game was about, and held it up a bit above my shoulders. As he did, we reached Powell Street.

  With a sly wink, I pulled on the gray janitorial pants, bunching my dress up at my waist in the process. A little exposure was unavoidable, but I had no intention of giving this guy a free show. I pulled the dress up over my head in a single motion and stuffed it in my bag. To his regret, I was wearing a very sensible camisole. Cream-colored. Not an inch of lace. I pulled on the white-and-gray janitorial shirt, wonderfully loose with no buttons, and put my hands out in a big “Ta-da!” of success. He looked disappointed, and I didn’t blame him. He’d seen less of me than he would have at the beach. “Thank you so much!” I said with another big smile. I took the raincoat from him.

  “Let’s do this again,” he said hopefully as I closed my overstuffed bag.

  “Sure,” I said, but not in an overly encouraging way. Being all saucy like that requires way too much energy.

  We had reached Montgomery, and I could see that the three Fish had also just about reached my car. It would have to be Montgomery, then. The doors opened and I stepped out. Two doors down, the Fish burst out onto the platform after me. There was a lot more running ahead of us. I really had to hope that their good-for-nothing prep school had at least prepped them for a little track-and-field.

  I launched out of the station onto Market Street and almost right away turned left onto Sansome. I made a staircase on the map heading northeast, stepping into traffic often and earning myself a few spirited hand gestures in the process. As I glanced back, I could see that the Fish were struggling to keep up, Mace Boy especially. But they were still on my tail.

  A few minutes later I crossed the trolley tracks and saw RealCorp up ahead. I slowed down a little bit. The Fish were within shouting distance, and they took advantage of it, using up all their air to hurl some keen and very imaginative possibilities about my future toward me. As they closed the distance, I picked up my speed. We’d reached the corner of RealCorp and it was time to sprint. I dashed toward the brightly lit loading dock, where the same two security guards were sitting in almost exactly the same posture. “Help!” I shouted, waving my hands. That made it very hard to run. I put my hands down. “Help,” I said again. “Fish! Three of them!” They came into view as they charged after me toward the loading dock, and the two security guards got to their feet. I could see that the two of them together could not have bested a third-grader in a game of checkers, but thankfully they had enough wattage to see my uniform and see three Fish in pursuit and put one and three together. That was all I needed. They reached for their holsters just as I scrambled up the iron steps. “The girl has a knife,” I gasped.

  “Go,” the guard closest to me said, waving me into the building. “We’ll take care of them.” He turned a big scowl of concentration on the approaching Fish. His buddy did the same, but he had already pulled his gun from its holster.

  Aw, I thought. So sweet. Two such big guys protecting little old me. I didn’t feel an ounce of regret for the Fish, but it would have been nice to watch them make the acquaintance of the two guards.

  I know, I know—Officer Gao would definitely not have approved.

  12

  NATALIA

  OCTOBER 11—AFTERNOON

  I was inside RealCorp. I had tried to find floor plans or interior shots, but the building was a black box—no one knew a thing about it. So I was starting from scratch.

  There were four cleaning carts in the corridor, identically tidy and parked diagonally. Four cleaning carts, just for me? It was like a handwritten invitation. I took the farthest one and gave it an appreciative pat on the side. Then I ambled down the corridor, doing my best to slow my breathing. I did not have a hat because none of the janitorial staff had been wearing one, and I knew that anyone looking for someo
ne suspicious on the security cameras would not have to look far.

  I took the elevator up to the third floor. From the height of the ceiling in the front foyer, I figured there wouldn’t be much on floor two. The elevators opened on 3 and I poked my head out. Cubicles. Lowly administrative, I figured, from their size and the hive-like murmuring of workers who had not earned the privilege of privacy. I ducked back into the elevator and tried 4. It looked identical to 3.

  The fifth floor had closed offices. I did a quick loop through the corridors and found that while these employees were lucky enough to count on doors and walls, they were not lucky enough to close those doors. And the walls facing the corridors were made of glass. So even an abbreviated tour gave me a flawless glimpse into the life of RealCorp middle management. Lots of spacing out in front of screen decals. Some listless phone calling. The occasional game of solitaire.

  Not until the tenth floor did I hit labs, and there I had to skip a floor because someone with a cleaning cart spotted me from fifty meters away down the corridor. She gave me a confused look and I responded with a little wave. Then I pressed 11.

  The lab equipment, apparently, was more deserving of privacy than all the RealCorp employees put together, because there wasn’t a pane of glass on the entire floor. Long cement corridors. Smooth cement walls. Very locked doors. I had a little trouble mapping the floor in my head because the corridors were so similar.

  I wasn’t giving up yet, but I had to admit as I rolled back into the elevator and pressed 12 that I wasn’t going to get very far if all the labs were like 11. I pushed the thought aside and determined to look at every floor before deciding on the next step.

  Twelve was like a combination of 11 and 5. Glass offices interspersed with very locked labs. The offices here were larger and designed for group work. Counter-height desks. Many more screens. Many more gadgets that I had never seen before. I expected lab coats like Dr. Baylor’s, but the scientists seemed to favor late twentieth-century grunge. There were a lot of baggy sweatshirts and crazed hair and thick spectacles.

  I was wheeling the cart past one of the long glass offices when an unseen occupant spoke through the open door. “Natalia Peña,” the voice said, sounding pleased.

  I stopped the cart. I turned around slowly and looked into the office. The voice came from an old man with a gleaming scalp. He was grinning at me, a skeletal grin with thinning gums. His skin was a sheet of damp paper draped over his skull, as colorless as if he hadn’t left the offices of RealCorp for thirty-five years. Judging by his fingernails, it had been roughly that long since his last serious attempt at grooming, too. “Do I know you?” I asked.

  The old man chuckled with some secret mirth. “Nope.” He held out his hand. “Hugh Glout.”

  Now I was wishing that I’d pulled on some rubber gloves from the cart. Too late for it. I gave him the loosest handshake I possibly could.

  “I’m impressed you got up here so quickly,” he said, still grinning. “I’ve been watching on the cameras. Actually, I sort of told security not to bother you.” He glanced modestly at the floor and then up at me, eyebrows lifted.

  What did he want, a thank-you card? I looked at him noncommittally. “Why?”

  “You’re looking for your brother, Calvino,” he announced.

  Well, I thought. Either my winning streak is over for the day, or I’ve just hit the jackpot. I couldn’t tell by the look of him. His smile was clearly synthetic, but there was something behind it that was unusual. It seemed more grounded, less one-dimensional than most synthetic smiles. There was a twinge in his eyebrow expressive of an underlying condition—a slight but chronic pain. Melancholy. His head was at a slight tilt, suggesting hopefulness or deference, but he also held his shoulders crooked, so maybe he just had wonky posture.

  Old people are complicated. The more years they had before fading, the more emotional luggage they carry. Sometimes that luggage makes it into their faces. Glout had lived with more years of real smiles, and those somehow still lingered in the fake ones. I had to admit that he was difficult to read.

  “Yes, I am,” I said. I left it at that to see what else he would offer.

  “Although it’s strange that you’ve persisted. You’re either taking an especially strong dose of attachment, which doesn’t seem to be the case.” He squinted at me. “Or you are a dedicated rule follower where family ties are concerned.” He tried to puzzle it out as I stared at him in silence. “I thought Kathy was very persuasive.”

  That made some sense as an observation, but it had nothing to do with me, so I waited.

  “You must be very proud of your brother,” he finally said, like he was testing a theory. “He’s a very special kid.”

  I didn’t like that. “Special” has an unpleasant ring to it when it’s surrounded by science experiments. But it did at least tell me one thing. He knew Cal. Which meant Glout was worth talking to. “I can’t afford that kind of sentiment,” I said drily.

  He laughed like that was a great gag. “Sure, sure,” he said. He waved at the room in a general way. “I told security to let you up because I wanted you to understand the work I do in this lab. Would you like to know what I do here?”

  I had my suspicions about the verb “understand,” but my suspicions wouldn’t get far on their own. “Why not?” I said. I’d already scoped out the room and could glean little from its contents. Despite his neglected personal appearance, Glout was tidier than most of his colleagues and he seemed to favor uncluttered surfaces. There were a lot of screen decals and a lot of polished steel counters. An old-school monitor embedded in the wall was dark and still, like a sleeping portal onto another decade. Glout had a keyboard from last century, beige and with most of the letters worn off, wired to a mainframe the size of a sink cabinet. On the desk before him was an open spiral-bound notebook covered in spidery blue ink.

  “Much of RealCorp is devoted to the manufacture of synthetic affects, as I’m sure you know,” Glout began. “But like any company, RealCorp puts most of its unseen energy into research and development. Which I am chief of,” he added, as an afterthought. “And the matter of most enduring interest to us in R&D is understanding why people wane. We want to understand the source of affect decline and, if possible, stall, reverse, or even eliminate it.”

  That much I could have guessed. “Really? I thought RealCorp was more interested in promoting affect decline so it could profit from the consumption of synaffs.”

  Glout laughed generously. He didn’t sting easily—bad sign. He was either very used to ridicule or very confident, and it didn’t look to me like Glout got out enough to be ridiculed. “RealCorp does profit from synaffs,” he conceded. “And it would profit just as much, if not more, if it had the ability to reverse affect decline.” He raised his hands, palms up. “Isn’t that what everyone wants? The holy grail? The fountain of youth? The ability to feel things again?”

  I shrugged. “As far as I can tell, people mostly want money. They can always buy feelings.”

  He considered my reply in silence for a moment. Then he changed his tack. “What do you think caused affect decline? I mean originally—years ago when people started to wane so slowly that it wasn’t immediately apparent?”

  “Something about emotional intelligence. You should know better than I do.”

  Glout frowned. “Yes, I should. But I don’t know. No one knows. As you say, we describe it as a problem of emotional intelligence. But what caused the problem? There are all kinds of theories. Theories about brain degeneration. Theories about an infectious disease that permanently damaged transmitters and somehow became heritable. Theories about natural selection. And those are just the saner ones. But that’s not the theory I believe.” He gave me a wacky smile. “Want to take a guess at my theory?”

  “Not really.”

  “I’ll give you a hint,” he went on, enthusiasm still at full sail. “It has
to do with how we relate to one another.”

  I gave him a blank look and waited.

  “My theory is about empathy. The ability to comprehend and share the emotions of other people. Lazy thinkers have characterized it as outward driven; something fundamentally relational, about interacting with others. That might be so, but empathy is also like a mirror. In seeing terror in others, our hearts start pounding. Seeing people cry, we feel grief ourselves. Do you remember watching Calvino when he was a baby? That was pre-wane for you, so you had emotions, too. And I bet Cal learned about emotions largely from watching you. You’d laugh, and then he’d laugh.”

  I saw a flaw in his logic. “What about kids who live only with adults?”

  “Aha!” Glout said, raising one bony finger in triumph. “Exactly. What about those kids? They still have emotions, we know that, but could it be that waning began in a situation like the one you describe? Children watching parents with no affect.”

  “Why would parents back then have no affect? It must have started somewhere. You’re getting chicken-and-egg-y.”

  “That’s what’s so interesting.” Glout beamed. “For many years before waning began, there was a measurable decline in levels of empathy. People felt things, for sure. But they felt less and less for others.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t know,” Glout said triumphantly. “Each generation just seemed to be less empathic than the last, even though according to reason they should have been more empathic. Thanks to successive innovations, they were more in touch with one another, more exposed to different kinds of people in different parts of the world, more informed and more networked. It defied reason. Researchers thought of it as an isolated problem.” Glout peered at me grimly. “And it seemed they might be right, because at first nothing else happened. Just waning empathy. People kept feeling the usual emotions even though they empathized less and less with the emotions of others. But eventually, the brain starts to ossify, get stuck in a rut. It forgets about connections it doesn’t use. Observing and feeling the emotions of others is critical to unlocking our own emotions. And I think without empathy, we lost the ability to feel not just others’ emotions, but also our own.”