IGMS Issue 49

by IGMS

  Graham got his heart rate under control, walked to the shattered pile of metal, and found the bright spots in the iron where it had been cut most of the way through. He knew, then, where Ed wanted him. He looked up at the three-story distance above him. Stay and starve, or.... Well. Really, he had only one option.

  For once he wished the river louder, to mask his grunting progress up the elevator cable. His heart beat high and thin as he neared the top of the shaft. He leaned out to catch the lip of the warehouse opening, wincing as his busted finger took his weight. He pulled himself onto the floor, the concrete cold against his stomach.

  He hauled himself to his feet, swaying, and stumbled into total disorientation. Vegetative aromas. Wood smoke. A thin raw scent like spilled blood. Trickling noises sounded all around him in the clammy air. A single battery-powered work light stood in the center of the floor. Once Graham neared it, he made out the shapes surrounding him.

  Hydroponic tanks. Floating plugs sprouting vegetables. Growth lights. Racks and racks of dried, smoked fish. On a nearby table, some bits of grey fur and feathers being worked into a garment.

  "Sustainability," he whispered.

  "I built it for us." The voice echoed from the darkness. "Totally self-contained. Regenerating, rather than depleting."

  "That's not possible. You can't avoid an impact."

  "It is possible. It's what the world could be like, if people didn't lose sight of the vision."

  "I've got a pretty good glimpse of it now," Graham said, struggling to concentrate on the direction of Ed's voice.

  "This is the first step of many," Ed said. "I'm not the only one who sees the way things are going. Who sees a world addicted to profit and plastic and overconsumption. Nothing less than a disaster will jolt us off that road. Hundreds of people on the web agree. The only choice is to bring the crisis sooner, when there's still an Earth to salvage."

  "Terrorism," Graham said.

  A scoffing laugh came from somewhere on his left. "You want terror? Look around. The country's overpopulated with apathetic idiots, squeezing out more apathetic idiots by the dozen. The future's where the terror is!"

  Graham winced, fighting off a hunger cramp. "People will change." But as he said the words, he knew with dull certainty he didn't believe, had never really believed, their truth.

  "You need help, Ed," Graham said. He took a gamble and withdrew his cell phone from his pocket, turned it on. "Let me contact that home - Reardon."

  "Help? They need my help. My conscience is finally clean. I can survive here, waiting for society to fall apart. When the end comes, I'll get down on my knees to welcome it. Then pledge my hands to the new world to come."

  Graham swayed. He had allowed this. Failure resonated in his weakened body.

  "If you don't let me leave, I will prosecute."

  "I don't believe in the law."

  "You'd better," Graham spat. "My name is on the mill's property deed. I worked for this place. My parents worked for it. It's mine." His voice became a shout. "And I won't give it to you." He loosed the paper cutter blade from his belt loop.

  Ed's gleeful yell rang out, surprisingly close. "Yes! Come on!"

  Graham gasped and spun. He backed away from Ed's voice, tripped on a cord. A cord leading to a small black box with a row of antennae, sitting on a worktable. The signal blocker.

  Graham ran for it, ignoring the dashing footsteps behind him. He threw the box to the floor, shattering it, and darted among the hydroponic tanks. Awkwardly cradling the blade, he raised his phone and sprinted for the warehouse's opposite end.

  Before he pressed the redial button, a tackle flattened him. The phone and blade clattered across the cement. He clawed at Ed's weight on top of him, the stench of their combined body odor in his face. Ed's sweaty arms slipped out of Graham's grasp, and he tore free. By the time Graham got to his feet, he saw the light from his cell phone's screen reflecting on glinting teeth. An anguished cry burst from him as Ed lobbed the device through the window and into the falls.

  Graham bellowed. Blood pounded in his ears. His breathing became ragged. The smell of smoke and water and fish guts swam in his head. He scrambled on the floor, and his groping fingers found the blade's handle.

  Other man. Threat. The nerve endings trilled in his arms and legs. Run? Fight?

  "Haaa. Haaa," Ed was hooting. Graham caught a glimpse of his stooped, shadowy figure circling, heard a soft splat as saliva fell from Ed's mouth to the floor.

  Graham's fingers curled tightly around the handle. He hunched, forearms protecting his vitals. Panic shrieked at him, turning him all eyes, jaws and ears. This place. His place. HIS.

  Blood coated his mouth. He'd bitten his tongue. Or had he bitten Ed? The snarl behind his teeth turned to a whimper.

  Red in tooth and claw. Was this who he was? He discovered his knuckles rested on the floor. Oh God. With effort, he pulled himself back from that edge, back upright.

  "Damn you." In a spasm of horror, he hurled the blade away from him. "I wo-won't live this way with you," he said. "And I won't fight."

  His voice sounded so frail. As his words disappeared in the yawning space, he knew with his head and his gut what would happen. Everything becomes part of the system, he thought. He would feed it, one way or another.

  Food for worms. A sob broke from him. No, not for worms. Something higher on the food chain. Ed would find a resource in everything.

  Somewhere, a lever clanked, and a low, humming rumble began. The turbines churned to life, vibrating through the mill's foundations. With a series of clacks, light burst from the warehouse's overhead lamps, bouncing off every table surface with frazzled energy. The dots of green began circling in their tanks again.

  Graham blinked at the figure crouched across the floor. Naked. Taut-skinned. Wide, grinning eyes obscured by a mane of curls.

  He felt the prey impulse to back away. Resisted it. With the resurrected power of Ed's new energy source reverberating through the soles of his feet, he unclenched his hands. Win... loss.... Irrelevant. The cycle of the green world fed on just one thing.

  "Compost," he whispered. He would contribute to whatever came next. That had to count for something, didn't it?

  As if in response to his thoughts, the raw voice answered him.

  "This place has a population problem. I see your footprints, Graham. But I'll leave nothing behind. Not even a trace."

  Graham's spirit sank. The river thundered around them, and with a skittering laugh, the figure that had been Ed advanced.

  The Soul Mate Requirement

  by Kelly Sandoval

  * * *

  Paula wakes, shaking, to the press of lips against her shoulder. She's been crying in her sleep again, chasing memories of Marcus. Dante is holding her. She can hear the patient rhythm of his breaths; her own gasping sobs slow to match him.

  "Forever, forever, forever." He makes it a mantra, kissing the promise into her skin.

  She has never really loved him.

  "Well?" Dante asks, as he flicks on the garage light. "What do you think?"

  There is a moment, as the bulb warms to life, when everything is shadow, and she can imagine safer surprises. A puppy. A new car. A loaded gun.

  But no, there's the crib, just as she expected. As an object, it's beautiful. The wood is dark, highly polished, and carved with a pattern of oak leaves. He has worked hard on this. She's smelled it on him, sawdust and hope, for months. Ever since her last promotion, when they could finally afford the application fees.

  She presses her open palm to her flat stomach and tries to imagine what it might feel like to have life flutter there.

  She has always dreamed of a child. A daughter, actually, with impossible hair and dirty nails. For the past three years, since she and Dante bought the house, she's imagined her daughter with his crooked smile and her long eyelashes. And even still, Paula dreams her daughter with Marcus's bright, infectious laugh.

  "Paula?" Dante sounds worried and more t
han a little hurt.

  She's forgotten to act happy.

  "I'm sorry." Her hands are shaking. She lets them drop to her sides. "It's just, there's still so much we need to do if we want to go through with this."

  "We don't have to." He says it like it's easy. As if he hasn't spent four months making a crib for their imagined child. "I thought this was what we wanted."

  She should never have told him she wanted kids. But the Family Stability Act is new, only a year since the president signed it. She remembers the speech. So many promises. No more crime, no more divorce, no more loneliness. Just limit co-parenting licenses to resonance-bonded couples and everything would be paradise.

  She looks at Dante, the wounded hope in his expression. He is so convinced that he loves her. He's never had to know the difference.

  "It's beautiful," she says. "You know me. Good things scare me."

  "You just need more good things, that's all."

  "You're my good thing," she says. And he smiles his lopsided smile.

  Her fondness for him is her fondness for cool, clear water. She likes how she can't see herself in his eyes.

  He leads her over to the crib, and she dutifully makes all the right admiring noises. He has poured himself into it, this symbol of a dream. She runs her fingers over smooth wood, spots spiders carved among the leaves, blinks to keep the tears from her eyes.

  "There's the application fee, the psych exam, the reference letters." He's counting the to-do list off on his fingers. "Do you think I should ask my brother for a letter?"

  "Better not." She's can't help playing along. She's tried to tell him. She's explained that what they have is light and warmth and not at all like love. He still believes. He'll believe until he's given his list and she's not on it.

  "You're right," he says. "And of course, I'll have to get scanned. Do you have to go again?"

  She was scanned at fifteen. Her parents made the appointment as a birthday present. The technology was still new then, the idea still thrilling. Soul mates. Or resonance cohorts, as the scientists call them.

  There had only been three names on the list they sent her. The scan was prohibitively expensive back then. Young, and still shy of the idea that she might have girl soul mates, Paula had only cared about the one boy listed. Marcus.

  Dante had never been scanned. He'd never gotten a pony either. So many extravagant, terrible gifts he'd missed out on.

  "No," she says. "Cohorts never change. That's the point."

  "Well," he says, finally sounding nervous. "Will you come with me at least?"

  She takes his hand, lets him help her up. "Of course," she says. She will take what minutes she can with him. Perhaps, he'll stay. Living with her should be warning enough against this idea of soul mates.

  He kisses her, and he tastes like wood and summer. "I'll make the appointment today."

  Dante starts to fidget the moment they enter the waiting room. His nerves come out in the restless way he scans his phone, the way he squeezes her hand, the constant bouncing of his left knee. Paula strokes his fingers, ignoring her own anxieties in an attempt to soothe him. She had forgotten how much he hated hospitals.

  The nurse who leads them back is large and soft spoken. He talks about the process with the measured cadences of someone who's said the same lines many times before. Paula catches his gaze darting between them, his slight frown, and wonders if it's that easy to tell what the test will say.

  "And now, if you'll just fill these out, the doctor will be right with you."

  Dante sits, still jittering, with his pen and his stack of forms. "Why is there a waiver?" he asks.

  "Things can happen, I guess. If you don't want to go through with it, I'll understand." She pats his arm, and reaches for her purse. Hoping.

  "We have to," he says. "I can do this." He bends his head and starts scribbling his name.

  The walls of the office are covered in posters about compatibility resonance, all done in bright, friendly colors. Paula can't help but read them as she waits. The illustration of two resonance fields forming a heart is particularly cloying. She skims the usual facts, a dozen or so per cohort, average age spread four years, geographic clumping and anomalies. There's even a poster on the Family Stability Act, which tells her the divorce rate among resonance matches is only 1.8 percent.

  That's the argument that really sold them in Congress. No more children of broken homes. What a rallying cry.

  "You okay?" Dante asks.

  Paula forces herself to breathe evenly.

  "I don't want you to be disappointed," she says. "It might not come out the way you expect."

  He points at the poster with the heart-shaped resonance field. "Let's see, overwhelming euphoria, matched interests, and a sense of spiritual wholeness." He kisses her cheek. "We've got all the symptoms."

  The doctor knocks, ending the conversation. Like the nurse, she glances between them, and Paula catches the ghost of a frown before her professional smile settles into place. They sit quietly while she scans Dante's paperwork.

  "Alright then, Mr. Reyes. Looks like you're all in order. We can take you back now."

  "How long will it take?" Dante asks. His grip makes Paula's fingertips tingle.

  "The scan only takes about twenty minutes." The doctor is brisk and calm. "Painless, I promise. Results take about two weeks. We'll mail them to you."

  "Mail?" Paula asks.

  "Government funding. If we don't keep the Post Office busy, who will?"

  "Well, let's do this." Dante stands, still holding Paula's hand. "Can she come back with me?"

  The doctor shakes her head. "Afraid not. The machine's pretty sensitive. A second resonance signature within fifty feet can throw off the results."

  "I'll be waiting right here." Paula promises as she pulls her fingers free. He leaves her then.

  Hell is a wall covered in pictures of smiling soul mates and none of them aware of what's coming. Where's the poster with the tombstone? Where are the razors, the bottles of pills, or three helpful tips on finding a good bridge to jump from? They're promising a love that never ends.

  Everything ends.

  When Dante dies, she won't try to follow him. She'll cry at his favorite songs or when she smells fresh cut wood. But he'll leave an ache, not the festering sore that is still her memory of Marcus. It's better that way.

  Or it would be, if it weren't for the law and Dante's foolish conviction. Will she lose him too, when all his pretty dreams crumble? She's braced herself for his death but never considered mere abandonment. According to the posters, 54 percent of unmatched marriages end in divorce.

  Forever, he tells her, just like the posters.

  Everything ends.

  A week after the appointment, Paula's mother drops by for her weekly visit. She's dressed for war: a white sunhat with a profusion of plastic birds nesting among neon silk flowers. It could be worse. When she really wants a fight, she wears a cloche.

  "Paula, love," she says, kissing Paula on each cheek as she breezes in. "Get your mother some wine, won't you?"

  Paula hands her a glass, already waiting, and they settle in the living room, where her mother perches uncomfortably on the third-hand sofa.

  "What are we drinking?" her mother asks, in a tone of practiced disapproval.

  "Same thing as last week, Mother. We like it. It's cheap."

  "And what's the point of your new fancy title and all those extra hours if you don't buy decent wine?" She picks the glass back up, takes another drink, makes the same face. She'll finish it, and take a second glass. She always does. "Speaking of, what's this I hear about you skipping Kati's birthday party?"

  "It's at noon. I can't take off work to sing happy birthday to a two-year-old. As it is, I'm going to have to find time in a month or two when Alexa has the next one." Paula considers her own glass but knows better than to start drinking while her mother's present. They're good enough at fighting without the help.

  "Is that what this is ab
out?" Her mother's voice softens. "Darling, if having a child is that important to you, then you take Dante and find a nice place in Canada. I'll lend you the money. But don't take it out on your sister."

  The words are well meant. Paula tries to remember that.

  "He got scanned last week, actually." Lightly said, through gritted teeth.

  Her mother looks down. Glances out the window. Her gaze finds dozens of places that aren't Paula, and it rests on each one. She doesn't speak.

  "It was his idea," Paula says.

  "Of course." She sets her glass on the side table, next to a picture of Dante and Paula on their last trip to Mexico. Dante's grandmother stands between them, beaming.

  "He made a crib," Paula says. "As a surprise."

  Paula's mother picks up the picture, and her smile is warm. "You know I like Dante," she tells the picture. "He's been a gift. But you know what the scan's going to say."

  "I know." It's not something she can force. She can't remake herself into the person he belongs with. She will never be his soul mate. It's why she chose him. "He believes it, though. He thinks he loves me."

  Her mother sets the picture down, very carefully. "You know, your father and I have been married 35 years."

  "Yes," Paula answers, puzzled.

  "35 years. We've survived war, cancer, even children. He still brings me flowers every Sunday. He pretends to like my hats. I love your father." She tugs absently at her wedding ring, then settles it back into place. "But he's not my soul mate."

  "Of course he is." Paula's seen the way her father brightens when her mother enters the room. Has heard the laugh her mother saves for him alone.

  "No, darling. Love is something your father and I choose. You and Marcus, your sister and her wife, that's different. That's love as something you are." She shakes her head, her expression growing introspective. "I think we were wrong, to get you girls scanned so young. It was so new at the time, so exciting. True love. I wanted that for you."