by Rachel Heng
Samuel had wanted to be a pediatrician, she remembered suddenly. He had always been good with children. He’d practiced on her. She thought of him now, long-limbed and knobbly at the joints, hair brushing the floor and glasses sliding past his forehead, teaching her to do a headstand against the kitchen island. Lea laughing and kicking up before her mother could stop her.
He’d never stood a chance, of course. Non-lifers didn’t have the lifespan to complete the four decades of medical training required to qualify as even the most basic of doctors.
“Lea.”
At the sound of Jessie’s voice, Lea’s insides warmed. Jessie had that effect on people; most Tenders who worked maintenance did. The texture of her voice was golden and syrupy. Jessie was family. She’d looked after Samuel before Lea; looked after Lea’s mother, when she was still alive. And her father, before he’d disappeared.
They entered the treatment room, a space so clean and uncluttered that it felt much larger than it really was. All the equipment—regulators, sensors, scales—was neatly tucked away behind white panels, all except for the cocoon, which sat silently in a corner. Lining the far wall was a vertical garden, row upon row of shiny porcelain pots, mostly succulents, prickly turgid limbs jostling for space.
“Oh, Jessie,” Lea said. “You’re going to be so shocked at my stats. I’ve probably lost a whole month just from yesterday alone.”
Jessie’s hands squeaked into cream rubber gloves, milky against her skin.
“Well, let’s see what the damage is, shall we?” Jessie drew one finger across a screen. The cocoon in the corner of the room softly whirred to life. It emitted a pale green light, and then was silent.
Lea removed her clothes quickly, folding them neatly on Jessie’s desk. Her skin prickled with cold.
“Oof.” Jessie’s gloved fingers met with the dark purple shape on Lea’s hip. “Land yoga?”
For a moment Lea was struck with the odd thought that they could have been sisters, she and Jessie, comparing bodies in their bedroom. She wondered what that must have been like, having a sister. How different it would have been to having a brother.
There he was again, Samuel. Sitting in the corner of the room. He had his nose in a worn book, something to do with string theory or ornithology, his two favorite topics. He chewed on his forefinger as he read, nose scrunched up. Lea stared at him, wishing he would look up at her. But he never did.
You’ve always had his nose, her mother said. It was the only time she’d allowed Lea to indulge in what she would otherwise consider to be unproductive wallowing. Uju had always made exceptions for Samuel.
The cocoon was ready. It slid open noiselessly, revealing the narrow bed within.
Lea took Jessie’s outstretched hand and stepped in. Bare skin against the rough, sanitized sheet, she exhaled one long, audible breath. The sides of the cocoon were transparent, allowing her to see outside, but it was little comfort. Her heart rattled in her chest.
Jessie touched the screen again, sending the sound of a calm ocean streaming into the small space. Then, the smell of salt, fresh and bracing. Lea closed her eyes.
The lid slid over her body, a click telling her that the airlock was sealed. The sides turned opaque, plunging her into an inky darkness. She spread her fingers against the rough fabric of the mattress, then closed them, then spread them again, reassuring herself that she was still there. She squeezed her eyes shut.
She saw Samuel again, the day the coughing wouldn’t stop, the day he stared at his hand for a long time after bringing it away from his mouth. Lea making herself as small as she could in the corner of the living room as her parents rushed to Samuel’s side. Thinking about it now, it must have been strange, Samuel crinkle-eyed and loose around the middle, the hair on his head sparser, grayer than that of their seventy-six-year-old father.
A low vibration filled the cocoon. Lea knew the drill: the gas, the green light, then vibration again. She breathed slowly, mindfully, dragging the air against the walls of her windpipe. It would be over soon.
The second vibration came. And then, without warning, her father’s face. Not the man she had seen on the street, but her father as he used to be. His skin firm with life, his eyes dark and shining pinpricks, the same shape and color as hers.
Her father, grabbing Samuel’s wrist so roughly that she saw her brother wince behind the corrective lenses. Her father, staring shock-still into Samuel’s palm, as if reading some terrible future in their lines. She found out later it wasn’t the lines he was looking at, of course. It had been blood, thick and frothy, mixed with phlegm.
But it wasn’t the blood that she remembered most clearly. Or what came later, the coughing fits, the cancer, the hospitals, the funeral. She had always known that Samuel would die. What she remembered was the look on her father’s face that first day, the day the coughing wouldn’t stop. The way his face had twisted as he stared into Samuel’s hand, his mouth becoming a thin line. His eyes were blank and intractable pools, suddenly cold and foreign to her. The terrible, sad look on his face was what she remembered.
* * *
When the cocoon’s lid finally opened, Lea’s eyes were still squeezed shut.
“All done,” Jessie sang. “Hey, you okay?”
She took three deep breaths, counting as she filled her lungs.
“Lea?”
Lea opened her eyes and sat up. Her skin prickled at the sudden chill.
“Fine,” she said. “I—” Lea stopped. How could she even begin to tell Jessie? “I just never get used to those things.”
As Lea dressed, Jessie turned to the three large screens that loomed over her workstation. Lines began to arch gracefully across each of them, propping up bars, connecting circles and triangles. The shapes formed familiar constellations, but they meant nothing to Lea. Only Tenders could read them.
Jessie glanced over at one screen, then the next, then the first again. Lea stared into her face, trying to decode her features instead, but Jessie’s expression remained unchanged. A tiny smattering of dark freckles across her nose was the only mark on her bronze skin.
“Nothing to worry about,” she finally said. “Whatever that little shock was yesterday, it barely moved your stats. A couple of extra cleanses, some months of intensive meditation, and you’ll make it up in no time.”
But when the numbers started to appear, filling the screen with their pert green angles, Jessie paused. “What happened yesterday?” she asked.
When Lea told her, she kept her tone lighthearted. Made it sound like a big joke: the two guys in their shiny suits, the Tender who clearly needed a refresher course in Creating a Soothing Environment (which Jessie was a master at, Lea threw in), the incomprehensible “Treatment Plan.” She didn’t mention why she had stepped out onto the road.
“You’ll speak to them today, then?” Lea said when she finished.
Jessie turned away from the screens, retrieving a small watering can from under her desk. She said nothing until she had finished watering the plants. Eventually, most were covered in fat jewels of water, and she turned back to Lea. The watering can, Lea noticed, was the exact same shade of maroon as the robes Jessie wore.
“Lea,” Jessie said gently. “This is Maintenance. Monitoring—they’re completely separate from us. A totally different division.”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to help,” Jessie said, without meeting Lea’s eyes. Under the warmth of her voice was a hard spine of professionalism, something that Lea had always known was there but never given much thought to until now.
“Oh.” Lea stared at her hands in her lap. “Well, then. Should we carry on? I have—I’m meeting someone in ten minutes,” she lied.
“Of course.” Jessie turned back to her screens and started typing, the even clicks of the keyboard like the pattering of rain. For the rest of the session, she didn’t say a thing about the bruise on Lea’s hip or the Observers. It was as if Lea hadn’t said anyth
ing at all.
A series of scrapings, joint manipulations, and spinal fluid adjustments later, they were done. The delivery tube next to her desk pinged, spitting out a small glass vial. Jessie pulled out a syringe tipped with a fine needle and with one smooth motion, extracted the fluid inside the vial. Lea offered her forearm automatically.
“I’m giving you some extra RepairantsTM. The usual antioxidants, plus a little boost to help you get over the extra stress. Oh, and good job on the Swimlates,” Jessie said. “Great for your tendons.”
The needle prick was nothing more than a tickle, followed by the familiar chemical rush of well-being. As she straightened her spine, Lea felt every little bone, every minor tendon, click and stretch into place. She felt the fine capillaries branching beneath her skin, laden with ripe hemoglobin and newly added RepairantsTM. Her skin tingled and she seemed to feel the tiny cracks and fissures in its surface close, the dead, dry cells slough off, snakelike. Her muscles were limber, supple springs coiled tight with strength. The heightened awareness of her invigorated body was blissful but also agitating, and Lea stood up from her chair abruptly.
“I’ll see you out,” Jessie said.
They walked in silence down the short hallway toward the lobby. Lea could feel Jessie’s discomfort hovering between them, but she did nothing to assuage it. It was Jessie’s own fault, she thought, for not even trying to help. It was impossible that she couldn’t do anything. She was a Tender.
The clinic’s peach walls were lined with a series of portraits, dramatically lit photos of men and women in lab coats, labeled with titles and dates in handsome serif type. Lea recited the familiar names—Pillai, Blackwell, Chan, Krusov, Moll—staring into their blown-up high-definition eyes that watched over the ebb and flow of clients. She wondered what the pioneers of the First Wave would think if they could see New York today, post Second Wave, on the cusp of the Third. The first immortals already lived among them. The phrase, so often recited that it had become a meaningless mantra, struck her all of a sudden. She thought of Samuel.
She stopped and turned to Jessie, grabbing her arm.
“You could look into it, couldn’t you, Jessie? You could do it for me?” Lea said. She hated the pleading note in her voice. “The Third Wave. I’ve heard rumors it’s happening sooner than expected. I can’t have this on my record. Not now, not after how hard I’ve worked.”
Jessie looked about the lobby, her gaze skittering away from Lea’s. As she blinked, her long eyelashes cast a cobweb of shadows across her cheek.
“I’ll see you next week,” she said brightly, prying Lea’s fingers from her arm.
“I will, yes, but couldn’t you just—” Lea stopped. Jessie was no longer listening. Her eyes were fixed on some commotion behind Lea, the voice of the receptionist rising over a low, insistent baritone.
Lea turned. The scene in front of her didn’t register immediately. It was, at first glance, exactly as she had left it when she’d gone into Jessie’s office for her appointment. The Zen paintings, the paper lanterns, the barista manning the juice counter. It had filled up while she was gone, every plush sofa occupied by other customers. But unlike before, none of them were looking at their tabs or the glossy magazines whose open pages flopped lifelessly in their laps.
Instead, they were looking at the man standing in the middle of the room. The clinic lights did him no favors, making his scalp under the sparse gray hair appear shinier than it was, casting shadows under his eyes and mouth, revealing the excess folds of skin in his neck.
“Our waiting area is members only, sir, I really must ask you to wait outside,” the receptionist was saying, her voice getting higher and higher.
“All I’m asking is whether she’s registered here.” His voice was a rich, calming sound, commanding and strong, at odds with the decrepitude of his face.
“We don’t reveal confidential client information to strangers, as I have already said,” the receptionist went on. The distress in her voice was palpable. Likely a medical student herself, she was clearly unused to anyone other than the clinic’s polished clientele.
“And as I’ve already said, I’m not a stranger,” the man said.
“Sir.” Jessie stepped forward.
Lea’s father turned, and their eyes met for the first time in eighty-eight years.
Jessie was by his side now, her hand cupping his elbow. “You’ll have to leave now, sir,” she said. She nodded at the barista, who joined her in a flash, taking Lea’s father by the other elbow. He twisted out of their grasp, pulling his arms away from them. He made as if to take a step toward Lea, but the barista grabbed him again, this time in a firm lock around his chest. He stumbled and gave a yelp.
“Hey!” Lea said sharply, stepping forward. “Stop that.”
The barista looked up in surprise. “But he’s a sub-100, ma’am.”
“He is not a sub-100,” Lea answered, walking up to them.
“What are you talking about, Lea?” Jessie asked curiously. Her father shrugged off the barista’s grip, pulling his worn blazer straight on his shoulders. The familiar movement made Lea’s chest tighten.
“It was you he was asking about,” the receptionist said. Now that she was back behind the front desk and absolved of responsibility, she seemed eager to get back into the fray. The other clients looked on as well, hungry for a story.
“You know him? Who are you?” Jessie asked. She turned toward the man, squinting at his face. Something flickered across her eyes. She stared at him as if he were a ghost. And wasn’t he, after all?
SIX
Before her father could respond, Lea grabbed his elbow and dragged him toward the exit.
“I’ll see you next week, Jessie,” she called brightly as the doors slid shut behind them.
For once she was thankful for the Saturday morning traffic. The flow of people swallowed them up quickly, and the clinic soon disappeared out of view. The weekend brunch crowd were out in full force, sipping flavored protein mixes and sucking in oxygen shots as if their lives depended on it.
Lea picked the most crowded bar they could find, a few blocks down from the clinic, squeezing in next to a trio of househusbands with wailing babies. The plummeting birthrate meant you rarely saw children anymore, so every passerby stopped by the prams, cooing and tickling cheeks, making the babies cry even louder while their fathers looked on indulgently.
The dim lights in the bar hid the worst of his face, though they were sitting so close that she could still make out the clusters of milia under his blurry eyes.
“My little Lea, all grown up,” Kaito said. He took a sip of the pale green cucumber slush in the tall glass in front of him and made a face. “Oh, that’s terrible. How can anyone be expected to drink this?” He beckoned to a waiter. “Hi. Excuse me. Can I get a vanilla milkshake, please?”
“A what?”
“An artery-clogging, LDL-rich, triglyceride-packed concoction of sugary, artificially flavored vanilla ice cream and whole milk,” Kaito went on.
“He’s joking,” Lea interrupted. “Such a joker.” She laughed loudly, waved the waiter along.
“It might be a good idea to try not to draw attention to yourself,” she whispered.
Kaito sighed. He looked down at his smoothie, stirring the green slush. The spoon clinked against the glass, filling the air that hung between them.
“You sound just like your mother,” he said, looking up. His eyes were hooded stars in his face, as bright and mischievous as they’d always been. The curve of his mouth still sardonic, still gently mocking. “Just like your mother.”
And there it was again, her mother’s disapproving voice. He could be recognized. You could be seen with him. Directive 28B: Aiding and Abetting an Antisanct.
“Anyway. It’s been almost ninety years. I doubt they even remember who I am.”
Lea shook her head. She knew this wasn’t true, but all she said was: “You’re back.”
Her father stopped stirring. “How are
you?” he asked. The smile was gone now. It was a serious question.
“I’m—” The word caught in her throat, a tickle, a blockage, but she forced it out with a cough. “I’m fine,” she said. Her voice was measured and calm, no different from when she was giving a presentation at work, talking through compound growth rates and kidney forward curves. But a pressure was building behind Lea’s eyes, spreading to the upper reaches of her nose, the back of her throat. It took her a few seconds to recognize the feeling.
Lea hadn’t cried in decades, and she wasn’t about to start now. She looked away from her father, staring instead at the street outside, where the thick flow of human traffic carried on reassuringly. People talking and pushing and walking, all with the same smooth faces, the same upright gaits. A patchwork of browns and grays and blacks. It seemed everyone was wearing the same fall coat. Suddenly, she longed for summer, the only time of year when the streets erupted in color and sweat.
“I was worried sick. When you dashed out like that across the road. At first, of course, I didn’t realize it was you. What were the odds? But when I saw you—even with all the people crowding around, I knew. I’d recognize my Lea anywhere.”
The lump in her throat grew. Like I recognized you, she thought.
His eyes traced some invisible pattern in her face, one feature to another. “I’m not used to you being an adult.” Her father grinned, revealing teeth that were faintly yellow, their edges jagged and ground down. She hadn’t seen teeth like that in decades. Was this how everyone’s teeth used to look? “Little Lea. Somehow I expected you to still be that little girl with the big, round eyes. Always quiet, always watching. Planning for world domination. Terrifying all the other children at school.”
Her chest squeezed. The tears receded. The face of a boy, pale and afraid, flashed before her eyes. Classmates quiet and crying. A fluffy rabbit, soft, white as a cloud.
“That was a long time ago,” she said abruptly. “I barely remember any of it.”
Kaito leaned back in his chair. He tilted his head to the side and seemed to be sizing her up. It was a look she couldn’t read. “I’m sure. Eighty-eight years. Almost a century ago,” he said.