This Is How You Die

by Matthew Bennardo

  Surg gives Pome a crooked smile. There’s no humor in it, just an acknowledgment of the breadth, the magnitude of his revelations. “Who’s going to tell the Prelacy what it can and can’t do, singer?” He rubs at the bead of blood on the back of her hand, turns it into a faint red smear. “After an exchange, there’s a second reading. An infobubble is data. Once consumed, it binds with the bioscape data, creates a biofeedback loop, and integrates the new years into the body’s cell memory. The new death uploads like a virus, slowly replacing the old.”

  “But how do they make donors do that?” asks Pome, face slack with confusion.

  Surg laughs, darkly cynical. “In sleep, singer, force-fed the info-bubble. That’s where the damage occurs, the initial paradox. It’s a brutal process, losing a future. Not every donor survives it.” His fingers rise to Pome’s hair, stroke the verdant curls. “Those that do wake up with a new death, changed, broken, and utterly unaware that everything they had has been taken from them.”

  “Like me.” Pome feels hollow. All that remains in her is an echo of what was her self. Not even that. Just a memory. Vague and tremulous.

  “Like you.” Surg sighs. His hand leaves Pome’s hair, wanders to the remains of the Machine in his care. The purple of his eyes dulls to a flicker. “I don’t understand Machine. I’ve never seen an AI like it. When I connect to its soft drive I sense grief. Sorrow. This Machine is dying of a broken heart.”

  He lifts the shroud and replaces it over the wreckage of Machine, his face contorted with unspeakable emotion. “I’m no Priest. I can’t mend it properly. I wish I could. And I wish I could help you, singer, but I can’t. I won’t try.”

  Scope steps forward, his face a helpless mask of rage. “Why?”

  Surg looks up; those purple eyes sputter, fade out. Blank hollows regard Scope with emotionless cool. “It’s a miracle she survived the first transfer. She’d never survive a second, and you can’t volunteer your life to her; we all know how that will end. You can’t change this. She’s going to meet her end. Soon.”

  Scope doesn’t look at him. He’s staring at Pome; she stares back, her gaze too deep, too lost. “No,” he says. Absolute certainty in the denial.

  He reaches out, offers his hand to Pome. Surg steps forward, mouth open to speak, a look of tortured indecision on his face, but Scope shakes his head hard. Pulls Pome away. She follows him to the security roller, docile, reduced. They’re halfway down the alley before they hear the rattle of the security roller, then Surg’s voice behind them, calling out with such urgency it almost stops Pome in her tracks.

  “You have to meet your death head-on, singer. Seven days. At Matin’s square, eight after twelve, the Prelate’s speech.” He shouts louder as they reach the alley mouth. “Don’t run from it. Don’t die somewhere else. Machine told me. It spoke to me. Do you understand? Machine spoke to me. It spoke. For you, Pome. It never speaks. Do you understand?”

  Scope ignores him, carries on walking. But Pome, curious, turns to look back. Surg’s stuttering purple eyes flash in the gloom. There’s urgency in them. Desperation. He lifts a hand as if reaching out to her, and she smiles, just a little. Just to show she’s listened.

  The look in Surg’s eyes follows Pome all the way back to the FlyStream. She can’t stop thinking of all she’s learned from the broken Machine, from Surgeon. It resonates through her. Shatters her beliefs one by one. Her understanding. Leaves her afloat, adrift. It is an odd way to face death. But is there any normal way to face it?

  Pome pulls her arm from Scope’s grasp. His hand falls back; he lifts it and stares at his empty palm as though bereft. But it is Pome who is bereft. A thief came in the night to take her life in her sleep. Machine was right about that at least. Her death has come in sleep, but she must face it in the waking. Perhaps even head-on, at Matin’s square, in seven short days. Seven days. It’s the merest fraction of eighty years. The magnitude of what she’s lost staggers her.

  She watches the vehicles flit through the FlyStream, thinks how she’ll face the next seven days. Knowing your death is both horror and liberation. It doesn’t matter what she does now; she won’t die until eight after twelve in seven days’ time. A bubble of laughter ripples up from her belly. She turns to Scope, grins.

  “Race you,” she shouts and tears off along the edge of the building. If all she’s got are these seven days, she’s going to live them. Wear them out. Wring them of each and every second they possess. Decide in that time whether death will come for her, or whether she will run to it, arms open, and surrender herself without fear.

  Pome stands across from the Prelacy, at Matin’s square. She wasn’t sure if she’d come, there have been such extremes of fear and anger. But time and again Surg’s voice has echoed after her. Followed her through this last week of hers, driven her to consider the unthinkable, facing her death head-on without hesitation, and she’s gradually come to accept that this is her only option.

  Scope’s argued his voice raw, but why run from something that’s bound to hit you? She doesn’t see the point. Why not face it dead on, square up to it? There’s more strength in acceptance than there is in denial. Scope stands beside her now, resigned to her choice and willing to support her. She couldn’t love him more than at this very moment; it’s not possible.

  The Prelacy is a dark block on the night. Looks much like a portal. Yawning. Vast. There are sky and stars abounding, the glittering scarf of Aleron’s ribbon, then nothing. Just black. A huge square of it. Pome stops at distance, reluctant to continue. Heart in throat. It’s not solid, that block of starless dark. Though it’s only a silhouette upon the night, it appears hollow, endless. A black hole, swallowing stars. Fit to swallow her should she venture too close.

  Two things drive her onward: the warm clasp of Scope’s hand and the weight of her skull. The cutting edges of that origami of information shot through soft tissue. Pome knows there’s nothing in her brain but the data. But pain feels real, as does weight. More burden than one mind can bear. Dazed notion crosses her thoughts that perhaps this is why, before Machine, no one knew their death. Enough to know that death is coming, without knowing how or when. Sometimes such knowledge is too much to hold.

  Together they weave into the throng awaiting Prelate Agastine. If Pome stretches to tiptoes she can make out the lavish preparations in the light of Lumine trees on the steps. Swags and bunting, plush purple carpets across the threshold, down to the square. A dozen grim-featured guards flank the podium at the stair top. Despite his theft of her life, her years, the Prelate is taking no chances. Pome can’t blame him. Fear is a great motivator.

  It’s what’s drawn her here. But she’s coming from the opposite side to Agastine. He’s constructed fancy barricades of guards and stolen years against his fear; she’s walked right into hers, refusing to be cowed. Accepted it. Might be a matter of choice. If Pome had the Prelate’s power, his wealth, would she be here or at some exclusive surgery, stealing the life from another. She’d like to think it would change nothing, but she’s unsure. That’s a choice she didn’t get to make.

  They’re mere rows from the front when the doors of the Prelacy swing wide. Regal and resplendent in his robes of office, the Prelate sweeps from the building. His swift, energetic steps swallow ground with arrogant purpose. Heavily lined skin hangs in folds from withered bones, yet he glows with stolen vitality, his fuel of stolen years. Hers. All eighty years of it. A ten-strong guard accompanies him. Slender, deadly Verts, no more human than Machine. Their blank visages reflect the crowd like mirrors.

  Pome strives on, taking no care now, moves ahead of Scope, untangling her hand from his; she needs to be at the front. But these last rows are penitents, disciples. They snarl at her, resentful to be moved, shove hard elbows out to hold her progress. She’s reaching, struggling against a wall of bodies, when she sees him.

  He walks at some distance behind the Prelate, a tall, hooded figure hemmed in by four Vert. Their formation is not protective—it’s a for
bidding square; the matte black solidity of their staves form a barrier, imprison him, remain active in an overt threat against escape. His face lifts a fraction. Soft blue light penetrates the shadows of the hood, washes over his features.

  He’s young but so burdened. It’s in the set line of his mouth, the pallor on his cheeks, the dark hollows framing his eyes. Pome gazes at him, can’t stop; he looks as troubled as she feels, and for a moment, she wants to reach out to him, tell him he’s not alone. A reckless thought, because soon she will be dead and it will not be true.

  Agastine begins to speak. His voice rings loud over the roar of the crowd, signals it to silence. The crowd surges forward in response. Pome redoubles her efforts to reach the front, grabbing clothes, limbs, but there’s no give in the lines of penitents before her, too much pressure from bodies behind. She’s about to give up, give in. Then, above the echoing cry of Agastine’s words, she hears one of the guards roar at full volume.

  “Stop! Hold her, she has a defrag. Move the Prelate. Move him!”

  The Prelate’s voice stops midsentence, the amplex crackles, cuts to silence. The crowd takes a breath. For several terrible seconds, Pome is unable to move as the press of bodies draws ever closer, strains forward, eager to witness the events taking place at the podium. Pome’s heart leaps to frantic pounding. Here it is, her end, and she’s not where she needs to be.

  Straining through the gaps in bodies Pome sees a ragged, skeletal woman in the guards’ clutches, her face a contorted, soundless scream. She’s so thin, mere skin and bone, but she moves with such power the guards can barely hold her. Mouth stretched to impossible width, the woman wrenches her arms free, jackknifes, throws herself down to snatch up from the floor the innocuous oblong of a defrag gun.

  A collective gasp rises from the crowd; a few isolated screams build to a hysterical cacophony. Bodies surge backward, pile into Pome’s, toppling her. She shrieks, throws her arms up, eyes fixed on a tiny glimpse of blue among the heads above her. Shots break out and the crowd surges harder. Faster. Pome’s breath explodes in hard puffs. Her legs piston at the ground, struggle for purchase, push up, forward. She whimpers, fingers scrabbling for purchase, lungs burning for oxygen.

  “Not like this,” she pleads.

  Without warning the pressure eases. Still pushing forward, Pome catapults into the air, onto her hands and knees at the base of the stairs. The skeletal woman tears past her, buffeting her with wind. She’s sobbing as she runs, defrag gun raised high. Blood seeps from wounds in her shoulders, legs, but she does not even so much as slow her pace.

  The guards pound up behind her, surging around Pome’s prone body. A volley of heavy cracks cut through the noise of the crowd. Pome covers her head with her arms, watches as the woman is thrown forward, screeching, a sound of unimaginable pain and fury. Her face smacks into the edge of a step. There’s a wet crunching, a muffled grunt, and she’s still. The guards split to two lines, spread out, and move toward the body. Slow, easy, weapons raised.

  Pome rises to her knees, stares. Behind her the crowd noise forms a solid wall. Isolates her in the moment. Just her, the broken body on the steps, and the guards. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. A terrible heaviness sits in her gut, as though all that weight from her head has moved downward. It’s ominous, a foreboding, but she doesn’t move. She can’t.

  The guards reach the body. Pome holds her breath as one reaches out a booted foot and rolls the body over. Teeth bared, coughing blood, the woman raises her arms, the gun. Pome watches the flat barrel sweep in her direction. There’s a din of explosions as all the guards discharge their weapons at once. The emaciated, battered woman on the stairs jerks as if convulsing, arms flying up, down, hands curled tight about that gray oblong.

  A deep thrum rips through the air, slices into Pome’s head, a blade formed of vibrations. The sound it pulls from her is a retch, guttural, ugly. Scope cries out her name somewhere close, but it’s muffled, as if heard underwater. And the knife slices deeper. Her head pulses fit to burst. The crowd noise blurs, joins the thrum, the increasingly panicked calls of Scope; they bind into one continuous note and she’s singing it; it rips from her throat as loud as a scream.

  Pome wants to stop, but her throat moves on its own authority. She raises her hands to shove them into her mouth. Catches sight of them through clouded eyes. Blood. So much blood. Where is it coming from? And the screaming, the thrumming, the notes so loud they fill her to her very edges. Push at her skin from the inside and she’s tearing. Rupturing. Can’t hold herself together. There’s pain all over, fierce, unbearable cramps.

  Scope’s voice sounds through the tumult, right next to her. Such agony in it. “Pome. No.” He’s screaming almost as loud as the note. “Help her, please help her. No, no, don’t take her away. Don’t take her away from me!”

  And she’s moving, rising, floating along, can hear Scope’s voice in the background, fading away. Hoarse, pleading, cracking apart. She tries to reach for him, but nothing works. Her body is no longer hers. Heat then. A blast so hot it burns her skin, and the endless note takes on a quality of hysteria. Over it, she hears someone speak. Their tone is lilting, fluid, as lyrical as song.

  “Such a glorious voice. Even like this, the note is perfection. What have you done, Agastine? You didn’t need to use her.”

  “Nonsense.” The reply is harsh, swollen with conceit. “It’s just another wastrel. What does something like that need eighty years for? Godless, wasting its gift on drunkards at filthy clubs. I have liberated those years, Priest. They serve me far better than her.”

  “It isn’t right. Not with singers, never with singers. You could have waited. I’m close, Agastine, so close. You won’t need more years when you have the key to mine. I promised you that.” There’s struggle in that response, as if more is longing to be expressed but cannot. It elicits no answer, only the fading reverberation of footsteps on carpet, stone. Then Priest speaks directly to Pome. “Easy, now. Easy. It’ll be over soon.”

  A hand touches her hair. It should be excruciating, but it soothes her. Lifts some of the pain, the noise within. The weight of his presence appears at her side. Pome feels her body loosen; she falls toward that heavy presence. Into it. Pain slips further and further away from her. She can no longer hear the note, though the swell and ache in her throat tell her she’s still singing.

  Her dazed eyes flutter open. Focus on a hooded head, bent toward her as if in prayer. On that face, so troubled for one so young, so touched by sorrow. And at last she understands. Priest is as much a victim of his brilliance as she is. She cannot bear this; it’s too much to know. Her eyes blur tears, veer away. Above them, Aleron’s ribbon strikes through the darkness, a glorious burst of light and life.

  She and Scope were to fly there one day, see other worlds, other races. It will never happen, but it wouldn’t have anyway. She thinks of Jaim, the pain of her rejection. Feels at peace with it at last. It doesn’t matter that she’s no time left to fix it; what they had as children can never be lost. Not even death can take the past away. It is already lived. Stored forever in time. Perfect and unassailable.

  All death steals is the future. Unlived. Unknown. Uncharted territory. Therefore, not worth the grieving. Distant now, as if on another galaxy, she hears Priest’s voice murmur.

  “Put her down; you’re hurting her. She’s in enough pain; have pity on her.”

  Pome doesn’t feel the ground as they lower her to it. Her mind is lost in the stars, in memories. In Scope’s eyes. Doesn’t feel the impact on her small, fragile body as it splits, begins to defrag. The shatter of bones, the burst of soft tissues. The crack of her skull. Half-blind, sheathed in ice, she lies there, seeing the stars in her mind’s eye. Waits for the end to come.

  As she slips away by increments, warm breath caresses her ear. His voice, rich, as lulling as a melody, speaks to her once more.

  “I would have waited for you,” he says. “I would have waited eighty years.” Then everything
fades. And Pome is gone.

  Pome awakes. Radiance surrounds her. Warmth. It envelops every inch. Drowsy, Pome goes to rub her eyes. But there are no hands, no arms. She blinks surprise and finds she has no eyes. Pome is everywhere and nowhere. Is she dead? Is this what death is? Then the most unbearable sensation. Too much all at once, as if every nerve is stroked and stimulated. And a voice.

  “Sorry to touch. I know it’s intolerable.”

  She recognizes the voice. Priest. He was there beside her as she lay singing that never-ending note, her body dismantling itself under defrag. Not dead, then. If not dead, then what? The touch leaves her and the relief is all encompassing. Pome sighs. Startles to hear the sound of it echo into the air. Swallows. Again that shock of finding no throat to swallow with. It’s as if her body has vaporized. She tries to speak.

  “Where am I? Where’s my Scope?”

  “This is my workshop. In my quarters at the Prelacy. Is Scope the man who was fighting? I’m so sorry. He was detained. He tried so hard to reach you.”

  Pome feels that as sharp as the pain of her death. Longs to be with Scope, to see him. But what is there left of her for him to recognize? She doesn’t even know what she is, whether or not she’s real.

  “Am I alive?” Her voice sounds odd, too close and too far away all at once.

  “In a way. You’re Machine now,” Priest tells her. “You’ve been on my list for this since you began singing. I never once imagined I’d have to do it without your consent.”

  Pome’s thoughts dim, blur. She hears herself repeat as though a dullard. “List?”

  “Only the soul of a singer can make a Machine,” he says. “It’s about where you go, what you see. I discovered by sheer accident… a woman I knew…” He falters. Continues softly. “I offer all singers on my list the option to live on like this.”

  Pome is bemused, too dazed to be furious. “Do they all accept?”

  “No. Not all. But enough.”

  Pome sinks into silence, shudders to think how she has been used. Even in this rebirth she is being used. But it is better than a full stop. Pome’s thoughts spin to the pitiable Machine in Surgeon’s workshop. If she possessed a chest, wore a heart within it, she would be heartbroken. The thought of the singer inside that Machine, the loss of the voice, is beyond bearing. Pome has to ask him.