“Heather?” The GenCell nurse asked quietly.
She did not respond.
“Miss Lambert?” The nurse knelt in front of her, correcting her traditional red and blue habit. They were the colours of the GenCell Corporation. Her hair, neatly tucked below a deep crimson bonnet, and with only hints of makeup for concealing blemishes, made her look prim and proper in ways that forced you to behave in her presence.
They weren’t nuns, though.
The GenCell Nurse Manual told them to respond to nun or even sister if someone addressed them as such. It was a callback to a different time. GenCell called it Modernized Orthodoxy, but what they really meant to do was pivot terminology in their favour. It was in ways like this that GenCell was already adjusting various meanings and distorting their own corporate image to appeal to the growing number of global customers.
The resurgence of religion after the events of L-Day required some inventive marketing ploys. They even called what they were doing their Good Works, which had resulted in only the smallest amount of backlash from traditionalists. At the end of the day, as stock markets closed and consumer reactions were analyzed, the evidence was clear – the imagery they appropriated seemed to be helping their cause and extending their reach.
Heather was quiet but clearly had heard the woman’s question.
“It’s okay to be nervous.” The nurse said. “A lot of people are nervous when they are diagnosed.” She sat down on the chair next to her and wrapped her gloved hands around Heather’s white flesh. They were still now, and this stillness joined the silent choir of the waiting room filled with likewise quiet, contemplative people.
“I… I don’t know if I want this.” Heather blurted.
“It’s okay, honey. It’s covered. GenCell is just trying to make your life easier until a more permanent solution can be discovered.” Heather didn’t like that the woman was touching her. She’d always hated being touched. She had traced it back to a memory when she was younger. One that haunted her like a rustling in the walls of her mind. Like a rat chewing away at her innards. Like the disease she now carried.
“Alright.” Heather said after a moment. “Let’s go.” She stepped up and the nurse helped her along the long hall leading to a hermetically-sealed sanitary room she had seen in all the introduction and tutorial videos just after the prognosis meeting.
“You’ll see. Most people enjoy the experience.” The nurse smiled. “My brother had it done last year. He’s never been better and he gets to watch his kids grow up. Do you have any-”
“No.” Heather said abruptly.
“Sorry. Yes. Of course not.” The nurse went a little flushed. “I’m… sorry.”
“It’s fine. I don’t think I would have made a very good mother.” Heather almost shrugged but the pain kept her from completing it. It looked more like she was hunching over. It was a sign that the painkillers were wearing off.
She thought about that:
Painkillers? But they don’t really kill the pain, do they? They just make it go away for a while. You can’t say you’re killing something and have it come back. At best, it’s a pain wall. Like a flimsy storm barrier that holds a rushing torrent of neuron-flaring discomfort from otherwise overwhelming. In the end the pain always comes back, though, doesn’t it? Unless you do something to stop it altogether.
She didn’t like thinking of that ultimatum.
“We’re here.” The nurse pressed the small green button and eased Heather into the airlock between the waiting and the operation room.
‘Between two worlds.’ Heather started thinking about what was awaiting her on the other side. She lingered in that thought, unaware at first that she had sent herself spiralling through her memories on a journey that cut through the pain. Physically, she was unchanged. Eyes staring like blank canvases.
Suddenly, the ache and agony slid off her because where her mind had taken her was far enough away that it could focus on the time without it.
She was here, but had bridged the mind to then.
She was alive with optimism.
Her adolescent years were filled with the expectations that the future would be… wonderful. It was a simpler time when GenCell was a vague word that came up in conversation only amongst the most diehard science-enthusiasts. All the same, it was lurking and positioning – and integrating – itself into everything.
It was a shadow at noon.
Hidden.
Up-and-coming.
Barely anyone had heard of them except in a general sense in those days. Now… Well, now you could find a GenCell corporation branch in every major city across the planet. They even had some rather spectacular locations on those lavish floating habitats. They own most of those, too, don’t they?
Hadn’t she read that their annual GNP had superseded both the United States and China last year? It was possible.
Her trailing memory brought her back to an age of wonder and curiosity.
Sixteen years old.
Bright future ahead.
Friends at the park watching the boats pass through the locks separating the Great North American Canal from the Atlantic Ocean. They liked to sit there and drink stolen alcohol and pretend they were on one of the ships heading out to sea. There was one in particular she recalled in vivid detail. Wasn’t it called The Parrot? She thought so.
Her friends, Timothy Wilson and his sister Cherish, were laughing when Heather breached the barrier between her present self and this much younger, healthier version. It was like waking from a dream within a dream. It was as if, within that memory, she had all the future possibilities to explore and shift in her favour. If only her future self were able to command the past again and pierce the temporal shell. She could have been warned about what fate had in store with her. Such are the illusions of memories, and we, like ghosts, watch over and smile or scream at the decisions we once believed so unimportant or, as often is the case, so important that they turn on themselves and prove otherwise.
Heather observed her younger self shake back to the conversation, pulled away from the size of the ships ahead of her and the green trees that obscured but didn’t block the view.
“Where’s that one heading, Heather?” Timothy asked.
“Probably out to Australia. I bet they have a bunch of seeds for their plantations in New South Wales. There’s a man on board; he’s considering what the hell’s the point of it all! He’s left his wife back in Chicago. She’s cheating on him. It’s all going downhill.” She reached for the bottle of sticky, sweet ice wine and gave it a good pull. “He’s thinking about killing himself but they’re expecting a baby, and even though he knows she’s unfaithful, there’s a small chance that the kid is his. He wants to wait to find out. This trip is good for him, though. His bunkmate is a Frenchman from Québec. He’s brought a lot of booze and some cheese. Now, our guy’s lactose intolerant but he’s willing to risk it. You know, keep life interesting?”
The two looked at her, entranced. They loved hearing Heather talk about almost anything. She had a penchant for grabbing the attention of those around her. It was a talent that evolved into a short career as a novelist prior to the invention of Seemore. These days her work revolved around correcting computerized mistranslations and minor syntax errors.
They don’t need writers anymore.
Not real writers, at least.
Someone went ahead and made them obsolete.
Software programs write stories these days.
They turn out stories, good ones at that, which are popular and well liked entirely because of their rather systematic, predictable nature. It’s what people want, and it just so happens that all humans have to do is analyze and establish a code to push out those who live in creative domains and seek to express themselves through words and concepts.
Heather, like other writers, is behind the scenes. Editing or adjusting elements here and there for flow and consistency. In the end, though, she doesn’t mind. It’s still writing, even if it can only really be called it in a stretched and sort-of way. Her employers, years ago, found themselves struggling to keep out of the red, forcing the closure of their office. That was a clean decade in her future’s past and almost twice that into her past’s future. She had been one of the fortunate ones. Her friends within the parent company had eyes on her well before they trimmed the fat. With open arms, she found herself standing in the doorway to new opportunities and accepted a managerial position for a new division they were going to open in China. She could never say that the company treated her unwell.
All of this to lead into the reason she found herself here today.
When they discovered the cancer it was too far along for conventional treatment.
There was another way, though…
Heather eased herself back and focused on Timothy and Cherish, placing a finger slowly upon and then pushing down the airlock button. With a swirl of sterilized air passing her by, she stepped forward.
She focused back to her resurfaced adolescent memories again.
Cherish smiles. “And? What happens next?”
“Well, he eats the cheese and has some real nasty diarrhea that gets him out of deck work. This is probably on purpose, but people believe him that it was a mistake. They make it out to sea and somewhere around New Caledonia they’re boarded at night by a very organized group of pirates.”
“Pirates!” Timothy yelps. “I love those guys.”
“Not those kind of pirates, well, not really. These guys are New Caledonian separatists. They want to hold the cargo and the crew as ransom to fuel their war against the government.”
“What do they want from the government?” a man, who had been sitting not far from them asks. Next to him sits…her.
“Uh…” Heather isn’t sure what to do.
He nods. “I didn’t mean to upset your process. It’s quite an imagination you got there, little lady.” The man puts his hand on Her. “Truth is, back in the day my Morgot used to be a writer. She had the same spark and talent to just, bam, make things interesting.”
“Mister?” Timothy asks, patiently.
“Yes, boy?”
“Can… can She talk?” Timothy has gone a little pale.
“Tim!” Cherish slaps him. “Don’t be rude!”
Words flash on the portion of plastic gel-form covering her mouth.
“I Can Speak. I Can Listen. Your Story Is Fun, Little Girl. Please, Would You Finish It For Us?” Under the gel She was smiling. To others, she looked something like a woman who had been placed in a flexible, plastic fish tank shaped to move along with her proportions. A few inches of liquid and then a plastic coat. Like leftovers wrapped in Saran wrap. A small box with a tube leading into the side of her suit whirred and hummed. If Heather looked carefully, she could see the liquid inside was circulating somehow.
“I… guess.” Heather said and went on. “So, the pirates board their ship, right? Well, our friend the Frenchman, he’s not really a Québecer is he? No, he’s part of the New Caledonian separatists! Been that way all along. As the rest of the crew is swept away into the cargo holding area, he turns to the out-of-luck would-be-if-for-not hero and tells him to hide in their shared bathroom. When the patrol comes around, the Frenchman lies. Then, as the others are rounded up, well, he gets the man off the ship, doesn’t he? He helps him to a lifeboat and tells him to get as far away as possible. He doesn’t need to be told twice. So he does.” The others look on, interested.
“He’s about halfway to the New Caledonian coast when the airstrike happens. That whole ‘we don’t negotiate with terrorists’ thing. The ship sinks to the watery depth. It’ll be a diving site in a few years with a story attached to it. Meanwhile the man makes landfall and finds himself a nice little bar. He sits down and explains what’s happened to him. A woman along with a group of her friends listen to his story and whatdoyouknowit she finds herself talking to him. They hit it off and he decides to stay in New Caledonia. He gets a job that he likes. They have a couple kids together. Happy endings for everyone who deserves it.”
‘Lovely Story!’ The red words move across the gelatinous bubble-woman’s face.
“What happened to his other wife?” Cherish isn’t impressed. “He just up and leaves her without so much as a word?”
“I dunno. I guess everyone else thought he was dead. Maybe she got life insurance or something?” Heather shrugs now as she was trying to do in the present. It’s sarcastic. Her high-reaching shoulders nearly top over her blonde head. It’s something that’s hers. A way to cope in times of stress or boredom. It relays a message to those around her that she’s rather done with whatever is happening. Even if she was the one to start it in the first place.
“Sometimes you don’t need to tell everything,” the old man says, easing himself to his feet using a cane to leverage his weight. “Well, we’d better be going. If we don’t get Morgot’s suit at a recharge station her nutrients will start to pollute…” He stopped at that, held the thought, and continued. “It was wonderful to meet you kids. I hope your future is as bright as it can be! No. As it should be!” And with that, off the two went.
“I’ve never seen a jelly bean that could talk before!” Timothy laughed. “Did you see the words appearing on her face? Man! It was like she was living inside a water mattress. Like… Like a reverse scuba-suit!” He kept laughing.
The other two didn’t laugh.
At least, she didn’t remember herself laughing.
It was a memory though, and her present self could have contaminated it knowing what was waiting for her on the other side of the door. It swooshed closed and the doors ahead rushed open. Ahead, her eyes confirmed that the doctors were preparing a much more modern and slimmer model of GenCell’s Cellular Preservation Suit®. She shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut for a long moment, hoping she would be drawn back again through the ages to a time when she was young and the world wondrous. This time, however, the Wilsons did not surface.
This time, she would not find consolation from her memories.
She looked ahead at the CPS. It would provide her body with the nutrients to keep the cellular replication process at bay. It would stop the cancer. It would lock her body in the state it was at this moment. Better even. She would be able to walk again. She would be able to run.
She would live, but was it really the life she wanted?
Pride struck her. Humility embraced her. Vanity caressed her.
And yet she chose to live.
“We’re ready to begin.” The doctor, a man in GenCell vestments – royal purple and deep red – smiled and motioned her towards the encapsulation table.
She shrugged, shoulders momentarily reaching up to her ears, and went forward to lie down.
Image Credit: Karston Smith