Vita Aeterna

by Jay Allan Storey

  “You can’t know all this,” I said.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t know. I’m just guessing. But it’s the only explanation.”

  “Who’s this ‘they’ you keep going on about? The government? Everybody knows what bozos they are.”

  He smiled at me. “I don’t think you’re quite ready to hear about that yet.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Appraisal

  The week before my Appraisal appointment crawled by. I didn’t feel like talking to anybody, not even Cindy. Then something happened that seemed like some kind of bad omen. One day I showed up at the co-op school and Travis wasn’t there. I asked around. Nobody seemed to know what happened to him. There’s a couple of other teachers, but they’re not much more educated than I am, and I’ve never connected with them like I did with Travis. As the days crept by he still hadn’t shown up. I was already feeling bummed out about the Appraisal. This just made it worse.

  When the day finally arrived, I got up and got dressed, just like always, though I knew it would be like no other in my life.

  “I’m going,” I called to my dad from the front door. He just sat staring at the HoloTV.

  At the Appraisal clinic, I avoided eye contact with everybody in the waiting room. I knew they’d all be freaked out. Hey, I was freaked out myself — who wouldn’t be? It didn’t help that both my mother and father had gotten negative Appraisals. Everybody swears heredity’s got nothing to do with it, but it’s hard not to worry about it.

  The clinic closest to us was in an older concrete building just inside the Corp Ring. In the waiting room, a bunch of kids, most about my age, sat fidgeting on the plastic chairs spaced along the walls. Some had their parents with them. Most, like me, were alone. I confirmed my appointment at the front desk, then found an empty chair in a far corner.

  There was nothing left to do but wait. I stretched out my legs, laid back my head, and closed my eyes. I tried to focus on something pleasant.

  I thought about how Cindy and I first met. It was about a year ago, when me and Richie were Cam-surfing. Usually we only did it at night, but we were bored and needed some excitement. We staked out the Museum of Democracy, deep in the Corp Ring. As usual, we got there by latching onto the backs of empty RoboTaxis and letting them tow us on our boards. Government buildings were always more of a challenge to get into, and we'd just gotten ahold of a hack that was supposed to unlock some of the museum doors.

  The hack worked; we made it inside through a delivery entrance. The place was actually open, so technically we could have just walked in as visitors, but it cost and we had no money to pay, even if we wanted to, which we didn’t. Anyway, they would have taken one look at us and told us to get lost. The hack was also supposed to give us access to some of the inner offices — much better for trophies.

  That was when I saw her. She'd snuck away from the group on one of her school outings. Later she told me she'd lied to them and said she had to use the bathroom, but then she took off to explore.

  She came around a corner and caught us just as we were breaking in. She was wearing a school uniform: plaid skirt, a blinding white blouse with a school tie. Her blond hair curled around the shoulders of her uniform jacket. Her reckless blue eyes bored into me. I thought she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen.

  She took one look and knew what was going on. I figured for sure she’d scream or rat us out or something, but she didn't do anything.

  “Looking for souvenirs?” she whispered.

  At first we were both too shocked to say anything. Finally, I just nodded my head.

  “I know where you can get some good ones,” she said.

  Richie and I looked at each other. It could be some kind of trick. She tilted her head to the right, and started walking. I turned and followed her.

  “Are you crazy, man?” Richie whispered, trailing after me. “She’s gonna turn us in to security.”

  “I don’t think so,” I whispered back.

  “My name’s Cindy,” she said when I caught up with her. I was in love.

  She seemed to know where she was going. Once or twice we saw uniformed people, but we managed to hide before they spotted us. We eventually reached a door that said ‘Storage #2’.

  “Here,” she said, nodding at it.

  I tried the hack. We heard a click. Richie and I looked at each other. I shrugged and turned the handle. It opened. I half expected a squad of SecureCorp soldiers to jump out from behind it. The room was empty of people, but we stood for a few seconds with our mouths hanging open. It was the storage room for the entire souvenir shop. There were shelves and shelves of stuff — a trophy-hunter’s paradise. Richie and I grabbed a couple of the best ones we could find.

  “We better get out of here,” Richie whispered.

  “Thanks,” I said to Cindy as we backed out the door. She smiled. It seemed ridiculous to even suggest it, but hey, you only live once. I said: “I want to see you again.”

  She didn’t say anything. She punched something on her controller and her HUD address came up on my display. I gave her one last smile. I felt ten feet tall as we took off with our trophies.

  After that me and Cindy were together all the time. Sometimes I felt like a loser with her; she had all this money and opportunity and this incredible education, while I had nothing, and could barely read and write. All I had was what I learned from the volunteer guys like Travis in the Quarters.

  There were holes in my education you could drive a truck through, but she never laughed at me or said anything about it. Sometimes she’d correct me about something, but she always did it with love. Cindy…

  Something bumped against my feet and I woke from my daydream. Some old lady was trying to get by. She gave me a nasty look. What was she doing here anyway? She must have been Appraised back in the Stone Age. I pulled in my legs and sat up straighter, but laid back and closed my eyes again after she passed.

  My mind spun ahead double-time. I thought about the milestones in people’s lives: birth, marriage, children, and of course, finally — death. All of them had been around in some form for as long as people existed. And none of them had changed all that much since then — except the last one. The newest milestone, Appraisal, had been around for less than a hundred years, but it was a doozy.

  I heard muffled voices behind the door in front of me. I lifted up my head and opened my eyes. The door opened. A girl, about my age, stumbled out, crying into a handkerchief. A nurse in a white uniform had an arm around her shoulders, comforting her. The girl removed the handkerchief and blew her nose. For a second, she looked up and her eyes met mine. I cringed. This was exactly what I’d been trying to avoid.

  I couldn’t help studying her face. It did look a little wrinkled — nah, that had to be my imagination. There’s no way you’d see anything this early. The girl staggered past and out the door. I laid back again. Thinking about it was a drag. I tried to blank out my mind and I must have fallen asleep.

  I woke with a hand on my shoulder. I jumped and drew back. The same nurse, the one that was comforting the girl, was standing beside me.

  “Mr. Barret?” she said. Her eyes were sad.

  I nodded. How can somebody handle a job like that? I thought.

  I followed her through the door the crying girl had come out of and down a hallway. By this time I was totally wired. She pointed to a small room on the right and I went in. She shut the door and I waited.

  For my whole life I’d been able to put the whole issue of Appraisal out of my mind. Now the moment that every kid my age looked forward to with a mixture of anticipation and dread, was finally here. I thought about trying to go back to sleep, but now I was too strung out.

  I figured I was probably screwed. Talk about bad genes. My mother, my dad. There was something screwy about my uncle’s Appraisal too — my dad’s brother. I’d never met my uncle Zack. I always assumed he was dead. Dad would never talk about him, or what happened to him, but it must have been
something bad. Another negative Appraisal, I figured. Seemed like everybody else in my family had gotten screwed. Hey, why not me too?

  I thought about how I’d react to the result. If it was bad, I’d accept it and be a man. There was no way I was going to end up like the girl I saw in the waiting room. Or like my dad…

  If it was good, I’d be — what was the word — humble. I wouldn’t flaunt it and look down on the unlucky bastards with low multiples like some of the older kids I’d seen. If it was mediocre, well — that’s what most people’s was anyway. Nothing wrong with that.

  A different nurse knocked softly, opened the door, and led me to another room, with a raised bed and benches full of tools and instruments.

  This is it, I thought.

  In a few minutes a man in a lab coat came in, carrying an electronic notebook.

  “Mr. Barret,” he said, smiling. He reached out his free hand and shook mine. “I’m Doctor Ryman. I’m going to do your Appraisal today.”

  I swallowed hard, as the reality hit me.

  “Just relax,” he said. “It won’t hurt a bit.”

  He swept a hand toward the bed, and I climbed up on it. The nurse held out a tray with an electronic hypo. It looked a lot smaller than I was expecting. Such a small gizmo producing such huge consequences. Dr. Ryman picked it up, checked the dosage reading, and pressed it against my upper arm. I felt a slight pinch, like Cindy did when she was teasing me. Dr. Ryman put the syringe back on the tray and the nurse carried it away.

  They both took off for about ten minutes, left me lying on the bed, shaking. When they got back, Dr. Ryman took a blood sample. That was a more involved procedure than the actual Appraisal. I watched my red blood filling the test-tube. It looked normal enough.

  What an idiot, I thought. How would you expect it to look?

  Dr. Ryman stepped back and took off his gloves.

  I was lying there like a dummy waiting for something else to happen, but the nurse just motioned for me to get down from the bed. She led me back to the room I’d been in before.

  ‘Anticlimactic’ — yeah, I thought. That was the word.

  Funny, I didn’t feel any different, even though I knew the injection could transform my life. Twenty minutes later Dr. Ryman walked in. He sat there for a few seconds, staring at me like I was some kind of freak.

  What’s the deal? I thought. Is he trying to psych me out or something? Is this part of it?

  “Mr. Barret?” he said.

  Is that all anybody says around here?

  I nodded.

  His face twisted into this weird expression. “I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a glitch.”

  “What?” I said, like a moron. “They gotta do it again?”

  He just sat there staring at me. I tried to figure out exactly what his expression was, and I felt a lump in my throat when it finally occurred to me — it was fear.

  “Would you follow me, please?” he said.

  We left the room and headed down the hall. At the very end was another room with a narrow, padded bench on one side and a chair against the far wall. It looked a lot like the one I’d just been in, but something was different.

  “Please wait here,” he said. He shut the door and I jumped when I heard the thunk of the latch outside. I tried the handle. I was right — it was locked.

  “Hey,” I pounded on the door. “What’s going on? What the hell are you trying to pull!”

  That was when I figured out the difference between this room and the one I was in before. My shouts faded into the walls and disappeared instantly. It was a hardened, sound-proof cell. I was a prisoner.

  I pounded on the door for another twenty minutes before I finally gave up. I sat down and tried to figure out what was going on. I’d been preparing for all kinds of different scenarios my whole life: high, low, even negging out. This wasn’t like any of them. I’d talked to older kids about how their Appraisals had gone, and none of them had mentioned anything like this.

  My hands were shaking. Strung out and exhausted, I lay down on the bench. Maybe it was stress or something. Maybe it was the injection. Whatever it was, in a few minutes I fell asleep.

  When I woke up there were voices in the room. Two white-coated men were standing just inside the open door. I jumped up and rushed at them. I was hoping I could push them out of the way and get out of this place. They each grabbed one of my arms. Before I could even yell anything one of them pressed an injector against my shoulder, and everything went black.

  CHAPTER 8

  A Prisoner

  When I woke up I had no idea how much time had passed. My head was pounding like bombs were exploding inside my skull. I tried to sit up, but the pain almost made me pass out. I closed my eyes again, lay back down, and waited for the pounding to subside.

  A few minutes later I tried again and finally made it. The room was about twice the size of the one at the clinic. It looked like a hotel room. It had a proper bed, which is what I was sitting on, and a night table with a lamp. There was a couch in the farthest corner, and a coffee table and a single chair. There was a bathroom off to the right.

  What it didn’t have was a HoloTV, a phone, or any other way to receive or send information.

  And there was something even more freaky, something I hadn’t experienced in living memory. My HUD wasn’t working. I frantically pushed buttons on the controller, but nothing happened. It was sickening — like part of me was missing — like there was a gaping hole in my reality.

  Now I really did feel sick.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed. The throbbing in my skull intensified, and I tasted bile in the back of my throat. I stumbled for the bathroom, collapsing to my knees, my head over the toilet, just in time to puke my guts out. Thank God there was a bottle of painkillers on the sink. I staggered to my feet, gulped down three, and headed back out to check the door of my room.

  Surprise, surprise — it was locked.

  What the hell’s going on? I thought. What did I do?

  I lay down and slept for another twenty minutes. When I woke up I felt something like normal again. I’d just gotten back out of bed when the handle of the door turned. I moved to a corner next to it, positioning myself so I could make a run at the opening.

  I crouched down, ready to spring through the gap. As soon as the door opened, I flew towards it. Unfortunately, the space was occupied by two burly guards: one in some kind of uniform, the other in a white tee-shirt. Both of them were a foot taller than me. I threw myself against them anyway. They grabbed my arms and forced me back into the room.

  A third man walked through the now open door. He was smaller and more intelligent-looking, with slicked-back hair and black-framed glasses. Like Dr. Ryman, he wore a white smock and carried an electronic notepad. Unlike Ryman’s, his smock had a small symbol, like a stylized butterfly, on the lapel. It looked familiar, but I couldn’t figure out where I’d seen it before.

  “What the fuck am I doing here!” I yelled at them.

  “Settle down, Alex,” the man in the smock said, smiling. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. Have a seat.”

  He closed the door and motioned to the chair next to the coffee table.

  I struggled against the guards, but finally relaxed. There was nothing else I could do. I sat down in the chair. The guards moved away but stood by the door. The white-smocked man took a seat on the couch.

  “First, let me introduce myself,” he said. “My name is Doctor Charles Knowles. You can call me Chuck.”

  “Well screw you, Chuck,” I said. “What are you trying to pull?”

  Chuck’s smarmy grin gave me the creeps. Somewhere behind it was the same expression I’d seen on Dr. Ryman’s face.

  “Settle down,” Chuck said. “We just need to do a few more tests — to make certain there are no side-effects.”

  “You drug me and kidnap me and lock me in this room, just so I can have some tests?” I said. “And what’s with the goons?” I nodded at the two men b
y the door. The uniformed guy, a gorilla with a square, over-sized jaw, sneered at me.

  “I apologize for that,” Chuck said. “There was a bit of a mixup. It’s important that we do these tests. We didn’t want you running off before we got the chance.”

  “Some mixup,” I said. My head was still throbbing. “So do the fucking tests and let me out of here. And what the hell is my Appraisal? That other doctor never even told me. Why doesn’t my HUD work in here? And where am I anyway?”

  “All in good time, Alex,” Chuck said, putting a hand on my shoulder. He nodded to the guy in the tee shirt, who opened the door and took off. “Don’t worry,” Chuck said to me. “Everything’s fine. We’ll do our little tests and get you out of here as quickly as possible.”

  I relaxed a little, but the whole thing still felt like bullshit. The door opened and the guard that had left reappeared with a bundle of clothes in his hand.

  “Put this on please, Alex,” Chuck said.

  I stood up. My head exploded with pain. The throb that had been fading away rushed back like a tidal wave. I swayed sideways. Chuck reached up and held my arm to steady me. After a few seconds the pain finally subsided. I got undressed and put on their stupid hospital gown, one of the ones where your bare ass is sticking out the back.

  Each of the guards took one of my arms. They opened the door and led me down a hallway. It opened into large, empty room with several examination tables, mobile instrument carts, and giant overhead lights. I tried to pull away and the guards tightened their grips.

  “Don’t be so jumpy,” Chuck smiled. “You’ll be out of here in no time.”

  I was still groggy and confused, but one thing was becoming crystal clear: I needed to get out of this place — right now. I relaxed like I wasn’t going to fight them anymore, waiting for a break.