As the woman lumbered on quickly down the hallway other doors began to open and other men and women began to emerge into the amplified sunlight. Not all of them looked as bad as the woman but some of them did. Some of them had the same skin so ashen that it looked like they had sat in a microwave for days. A man who looked as if he were someone’s ailing great grandfather hobbled out of his doorway awkwardly on crutches. His left leg was missing up to his pelvis and it looked as if he could barely hold himself upright on his crutches. Marcus immediately wondered why the man hadn’t been fitted with a Titedelstein prosthesis but then he remembered the look on Denna’s face when he had reminded her of that quadruple amputee. This old man who was probably about Marcus’ own age might’ve been just as disgusted at the sight of man and machine merged together like that. Marcus shook his head. Was it better to hobble and titter everywhere you went rather than get the only help that was available! For some people apparently, it was!
Marcus continued watching as more people emerged from doors and saw that the old man wasn’t the only one missing a part of himself. Two young men emerged from their door and one of them lifted his right hand to shield his eyes from the powerful rays of sunlight. That’s when Marcus noticed that four of the fingers on that hand were not there. A young, short woman exited an apartment much further down the hall back towards the entrance and immediately it looked like an oddly shaped shadow lay across the left side of her brow. Only, there were no shadows in this hallway, just searing sunlight and nothing to shield from it. Marcus squinted his eyes and peered closer until he realized that it was not a shadow that lay across the top of the woman’s face but missing flesh and bone. Nearly half of her skull was missing. It looked like she had been brained with a baseball bat and the reconstruction effort had been a disaster. What a shame, Marcus thought to himself. Titedelstein could’ve easily replaced the missing part of that woman’s skull and surgeons in the McKell building could’ve made the rest look almost as good as new.
Marcus breath began to quicken with every passing moment. It wasn’t the sight of so many disabling injuries that could’ve been routinely fixed with Titedelstein and a skilled surgeon’s steady hand, it was the heat. It scalded Marcus’ sinuses with every increasingly labored breath and it made his thoughts fuzzy. He stood in a kind of stupor looking on as the rest of the people who lived on this hallway emerged from their own doors as well. One young man—he couldn’t have been much more than a teenager—had what looked like massive hardened boils lining his neck face and hands. He looked more like some strange, clothed prehistoric animal than a human being. There were others with less noticeable deformities as well, completely yellowed eyes, discolored skin, and some bowed over so badly that it was a miracle they could walk at all. And that was just this one hallway. Certainly, there must be at least a half a dozen more identical hallways. Marcus groaned.
Suddenly his body was heavier than it ought to have been. His vision was failing and he felt more and more as if he were struggling to breathe through cotton balls. He lifted his head and looked toward the building’s entrance, the same door he had walked in to get here. It seemed so very far away now, like a marathon distance away and he was not up to a marathon right now. He leaned on one of the rails of the stairway steps that led to the second floor of the building. Right now it felt like it was all that was keeping him from collapsing to the floor completely. He raised his head to look up the steps. They looked not like the steps of a building but the terrace steps of a great mountain. Marcus groaned again at the thought of having to climb a single one. He turned back to the building’s front door; it looked as far away now as if it were on a different continent. And to his dimming eyesight it looked as if the door were moving further away even as he looked on. He turned slowly back to the staircase and decided that since he was already here he might as well climb it and continue searching for Denna.
He lifted his leg—it felt like a fifty-pound weight were wrapped around his ankle—and climbed a step. Everywhere his clothes touched his flesh they clung to him in a moist uncomfortably warm embrace that weighed him down even more. He climbed another step and then another. The progress was slow and painful and the bright light everywhere was still growing dimmer. He climbed another step and then another. He was holding onto both of the staircase rails now for support but he could no longer feel the hot metal beneath his grasp. The feeling in his legs was draining quickly as well. He climbed another step and then another. It was time for a rest. He thought that surely he was at least halfway up the staircase by now but he couldn’t see the platform that meant that the next floor was only a few a steps away. Slowly, very slowly, he turned around to see his progress. When he did he couldn’t believe his eyes.
The same hallway was there stretching into eternity, and the same monotonous doors stretching along with it. It took his overheated brain a long moment to understand that he had only climbed a single step. The sight of a hallway and a staircase still left to brave felt like the worst sight Marcus had ever seen in his life. He blinked and when he opened his eyes the worst sight of his life was replaced with the most beautiful. A woman sauntered in his direction from much further down the hallway. Even at this distance she was conspicuous among the throng of people that passed her by. It was the short yellow dress she wore. It was a brilliant yellow and it made everything around the woman pale in comparison. She moved through the crowd like Moses through the Red Sea, in it. People skittered out of her path and flattened themselves against hot doors and hotter glass until she passed by. It wasn’t until she was closer that Marcus saw that the woman wasn’t sauntering but rather sprinting through the crowd to get to him and shoving anyone in her path roughly aside to do it.
It was Denna. Marcus felt too weak to smile but a smile blossomed in his heart if not his face. It felt like only a second had passed and then Denna was standing directly in front of him. There was a deep grimace on her face but she looked glorious, like the face of an angel gazing up at him, replete with white shimmering halo. What Marcus didn’t realize was that that halo was hallucination on his part, brought on by the intense heat. What wasn’t hallucination was the bulge of her cleavage straining against the top of the dress. Marcus was a tall man; from his vantage point upon the staircase he enjoyed a truly arousing view. It was an extremely pleasant sight and the last one he saw before he passed out.
CHAPTER 7
When Marcus opened his eyes he saw Denna’s beautiful face once again as well as the same impossible halo surrounding it. But Marcus wasn’t hallucinating this time, as he quickly realized when he tried to sit up. Pain erupted in his head and throat enough to make his vision blurry again. Denna held a hand on his bare chest and eased him back down. She turned and when she turned back around she held a thick folded cloth. She laid the cloth on Marcus’ forehead and the jolt of cold water against dangerously hot flesh cleared his vision almost immediately. He looked up and saw that Denna’s halo was really one of her living room lights shining from directly above her.
“You gave me a good scare there, Mr. Willoughby”. Denna said as she pressed the towel more firmly against Mr. Willoughby’s forehead. Ice in the towel quickly drained across Mr. Willoughby’s burning temples and made him gasp as the water collected in two pools upon Denna’s worn living room couch. It was a shock but he did not try to sit up again. Denna laid another cold towel across his chest and stood to her feet. She still wore the yellow dress and it was more vibrant and gorgeous than ever. It was painful for Marcus to turn his head but he did to watch Denna saunter away. The sway of the skirt of her dress was hypnotizing. He kept watching until she disappeared around a far corner with a bowl in her hands. She must’ve went into her kitchen because he could hear the refrigerator door opening and then the tell-tale clinking of ice in the bowl.
Marcus gazed up at the ceiling and wondered how many people living on the outskirts of the city would literally kill for a refrigerator? Certainly more than a few of them since refrigerators were not
a common appliance in most of their homes. Readily available ice was not common either. When Marcus watched Denna return with a full bowl of it he wished for the millionth time that Titedelstein was more accepted amongst the general populous. Titedelstein bodies wouldn’t need ice to cool them if they began to overheat because it was virtually impossible for them to overheat. A Titedelstein body would have to stand on the sun to overheat and a Titedelstein cooling system could handle anything short of solar temperatures. Life would be bearable again for the people that were still alive. More than bearable, exciting.
Denna sat upon the coach—Marcus watched the skirt of her dress settle smoothly just above her knees—and put fresh ice in the towel on Marcus’ forehead and chest. The cold wasn’t as shocking as before. The pounding in his head was just a dull murmur now. “So, Mr. Willoughby …” Denna hesitated “not that it isn’t a pleasant surprise to see you but what were you doing here?”
Marcus tried to sit up and Denna didn’t stop him. He rested on his elbows. “It’s just that professors never” Denna spread her hands “come here. The workers live here and the workers are the only ones that visit … ever.” Denna’s tone said that it was just a simple matter of fact.
“Actually, I came to see you.” Denna’s eyebrows rose. “I had a much more gallant kind of situation in mind but here I am I guess. And please, call me Marcus. You may have saved my life. I would say we’re definitely on a first name basis, now.”
Denna chuckled and Marcus wondered how such a simple thing could still be so enchanting. “I guess you’re right Marcus. You certainly went through a lot to drop by for a visit and you’re here now, so … ?”
“You mean, why did I come in the first place, right?
Denna nodded, then said quickly, “Like I said, it’s not like this isn’t a pleasant surprise.”
“I came to ask you something but now that I’m here I think I would like to have a shirt, first.”
Denna’s hand had been resting on the towel that sat on Marcus’ chest. She moved it now as she stood quickly to her feet. “Right. Your clothes.” She said and sauntered off down a hallway that Marcus hadn’t noticed before. She returned with his shirt and tie on a hanger. Everything was soaked and dripping slowly onto Denna’s floor. She didn’t seem concerned. “There wasn’t time to dry it.” She said, holding the hanger up. “It won’t take long, maybe an hour or so … you could always just hang out here if you wanted.”
Marcus sat up and looked down at his bare chest. He wasn’t a young man anymore. He hadn’t seen a six pack in any mirror in quite a while. Besides that, he was hairy man and he had never like that too much, especially not when it encouraged the kind of the overheating that might lead to fainting and waking up in someone else’s home while they nursed you back to life. He thought it might not be the best idea for him to trek the distance to his own home like this. “If you wouldn’t mind?” he said at last.
“Of course not!” Denna answered immediately “I don’t have much to offer an esteemed professor but if you’re hungry …”
“No. Not hungry, just a little thirsty. I would really appreciate a glass of water.”
“I think I can do that.” Denna answered and returned to the kitchen. She came back with a tall glass of water that was noticeably thicker even than the restaurant’s water and handed it to Marcus. He emptied the glass in one long drink and handed it back.
“Thank you Denna. I feel much better now.” he answered as he stood to his feet. He did feel much better. He stretched his arms and craned his neck to work out some of the stiffness and that made his head swim a little but other than that and a little tiredness he felt as good as new. “Perhaps there’s an old shirt around somewhere that I can borrow until my shirt dries?” Marcus asked politely. He winced at the idea of someone catching him alone, half clothed in an apartment with a woman who was not his own.
“Maybe I still have one of Morgan’s old shirts.” Denna said as her dress skirts swished behind her down the hallway. Marcus watched and hoped that she didn’t look back at that moment and catch him ogling her legs.
“So, I’ve heard.” He whispered as she disappeared into one of the doors lining the hallway, presumably her bedroom. From what Professor Edelstein had told him, her husband had been dead for a while. Bad for Morgan, but good for Marcus. Unfortunately, the same would eventually hold true for the majority of the people that lived in this building. This was a worker building, a place where the menials lived, or more accurately the place where they spent the few hours a day that they weren’t at work. These were the people who performed the dangerous, dirty, radioactive, labor intensive, and crushingly heavy work that no one else in the campuses had time to do. If two hundred people lived in this building perhaps two of them stood a chance of living to see fifty years old. The rest would never see that age but would die looking as if they had lived far beyond it.
But none of the two hundred would’ve ever whispered a complaint. An early death was a small price to pay to live in the campuses, especially when a worse early death was the norm everywhere else on the outskirts. These people routinely lost limbs in workplace accidents, contracted debilitating and fatal diseases, and then returned home to an oven where they roasted and baked until it was time to return to some other hazardous work assignment. They were the untouchables, the slave class, used, discarded and replaced as the need arose. Marcus didn’t like to think about it. It was yet another unnecessary reality that could eventually be remedied with Titedelstein. With robotic Titedelstein bodies there would be no need for a slave class to bear the burden of the privileged. Robot bodies would make work simple, easy and if a Titedelstein body were damaged it could be replaced easily and no one would ever know the difference. And besides that, metal has no fear of illness; disease would be a thing of the past.
Meanwhile, Denna returned and pursed her lips. “I thought I had one of Morgan’s old shirts left but I guess they took everything.”
“Someone took all his things?” Marcus asked with some alarm; it sounded like Denna was saying that thieves had broken in and robbed the place.
“Sure. The rest of the rover crew …” Denna didn’t sound alarmed, just a little disappointed. Then she noticed the look on Marcus’ face. “That’s just how things go here. When someone passes away the rest of the building divides up their stuff. They figure that the dead person is not going to need it anymore.” Denna grimaced. “Believe me, I wasn’t so casual about it when it happened—they didn’t wait a whole day after Morgan died before they came looking for his things—but I’ve been living here for a while now and nobody really has enough of anything, ever. It’s a miracle my air conditioning unit has been working all these years because if it ever broke down they’d probably kick me out before they fixed it.”
“Kick you out!” Marcus nearly shouted, but then he remembered that this was the reality of the working class in the campuses—they were expendable.
“Yeah, that’s life, right?” Denna answered flatly. “I’m sure there’s a thousand people waiting to take my spot right now.”
‘More like ten or twenty thousand.’ Marcus thought to himself but didn’t say out loud.
What he did say was, “I guess so. But it still doesn’t make it right that they’d kick you out just because …” Just because what? Just because her menial laborer husband which was the only reason she lived in an apartment in the campuses in the first place, had died long ago and now she was taking up valuable space that the campuses desperately needed for other menial laborers?
“It’s not so bad.” Denna said as she sat down close to Marcus. Really close. Close enough that her knees were nearly touching his. “At least I got to live here.” But neither the falter in her voice nor the way her eyes looked suddenly downcast suggested that it was ‘not so bad’ after all. “That’s my life, but tell me more about what it is you do.” She said quickly.
Marcus set up straighter. “Okay, so I’m a biomechatronics researcher …”
“I thought you said you taught robotics.”
“I do teach robotics, but my field is actually biomechatronics.”
“Bio what?” she asked.
“Biomechatronics. It’s an interdisciplinary science that aims to mimic how the human body works and create an amicable marriage between biology, mechanics, and electronics.”
“I understand some of those words.” Denna answered after a moment.
“That’s why I just usually say robotics. It’s easier that way.”
“I can see that.” Denna glanced towards Marcus’ still soaked shirt from where it hung upon a ventilation vent near one of the walls. “Well, it’s still going to be awhile before your shirt is dry. Why don’t you tell me all about this bio-whatever …”
And Marcus did tell Denna all about the scientific field of biomechatronics. He regaled her with formulas and theorems that she smiled politely at but did not understand even slightly. He recounted to her the sometimes bloody work of attaching Titedelstein arms and legs to people who had been made human stumps by explosions and flesh eating bacteria and viruses. She seemed interested but Marcus noticed that the blood drained from her beautiful face when he began to describe the process of transplanting artificial hearts and artificial lungs and kidneys and bladders into patients. She looked then as if Marcus were describing human vivisection. No doubt it must’ve sounded that way to a layperson. It crossed Marcus’ mind that perhaps he was laying it on a little too thick. He couldn’t help it. It had been so very long since a nonprofessional was willing to listen to the details of what he did for a living. It had been forever, perhaps literally, since Marcus could not remember the last person he had talked shop with that did not work in his shop.
Evolution's End Page 5