by Cole, Olivia
In sharp contrast to the rest of the medieval dankness of the subway tunnel was the Lift, the new-age elevator designed by popular demand. “From point A to point B without the germs or claustrophobia,” the dentured commercial models would beam (more beaming). Passengers flocked to the Lift and stood in the silver-illuminated circle, which would close off with some kind of cyber glass like a cylindrical bubble, and lift the passengers to street level in a breath before appearing back below ground in a whoosh, ready for the next group. It was extraordinary to witness for the first time: before you would be twenty-something passengers all standing in the silver circle, then in something like a blink they would all be gone, vanished to the mysterious planet of the street above the subway. The whoosh of their disappearance always reminded Tasha of the flush of airplane toilets. She watched the passengers crowding into the Lifts’ circles, and imagined her fellow Chicagoans being flushed away, dropped like neat parcels of excrement in an isolated field.
There were still stairways, of course, for those who had adverse reactions to the Lifts—and some people did—which Tasha had taken sometimes if she hadn’t gotten in enough cardio that week, or if the Lift was packed. Hardly anyone took the stairs, so you never had to elbow your way up. There was quite a crowd around the Lift now—defeating the tagline about claustrophobia, Tasha thought—so she looked around for stairs.
Her eye settled on the once-red paint of handrails, a rusty stairway that looked more like a fire escape. She took a step in its direction, assuming Gina would follow, but there was something against the wall just before the stairs, in the shadows of a moldy mosaic archway, that caught her attention. It moved. Tasha thought it might be a rat, a beagle-sized subway critter. But it was much bigger than a rat—stepping closer, Tasha saw that it was a shivering form hunched on a mat of cardboard, swathed in a gray blanket, eyes closed.
Mole people, said Tasha’s brain. Ninja Turtles.
It was a woman. She had muttered and clutched her throat, snuffling. Despite the filthiness of the woman’s fingers, Tasha could make out the chipping white crescent of an almost-nonexistent French manicure. Her hair was over her eyes and showed evidence of a dye job that was, at one time, pretty decent.
“Um…ma’am? Ma’am?”
Tasha didn’t know why she was talking to the lady. The odds were in favor of her being sloshed. But the woman actually looked up at the second “ma’am” and locked eyes with Tasha. Tasha was shocked by how blue they were.
“Are you alright?” Tasha asked. Of course she wasn’t, but these were things one asked in polite society, Tasha told herself.
The woman just stared, looking vaguely angry. Tasha had thought suddenly of every horror movie she’d ever seen and taken a step back to retreat when the woman focused on the person addressing her and seemed to collect herself.
“Me?” she asked
“Yes,” said Tasha. “Are you okay?”
“I’m better,” the woman said. “I’m better.”
Tasha knew that if Gina were with her—where had she gone? To the street already—she’d have been cackling and nudging Tasha’s ribs, probably trying to film the woman to put her online. “Viral,” she’d say while recording. But Tasha tended to be meaner in her head than she was out loud, and so rather than laugh at the woman—it wasn’t funny anyway; it was creepy—she just asked,
“Better?”
The woman nodded vigorously, smiling a little, despite the angry look that still lingered around her eyes.
“Better. I’m better.”
“Better than what?”
“Than you.”
Ahh. A Looney Tune.
“Oh, okay.” Tasha thought it best to remain neutral.
The woman’s gaze refocused on something a little to the right of Tasha’s eyes.
“Those are pretty earrings.”
Tasha recognized the look on the woman’s face, but couldn’t place it exactly. She cupped one of her earrings protectively. Before she could respond, the woman had moved her dirty blonde hair behind her shoulder, exposing her neck, around which hung what appeared to be a string of creamy white pearls. There was something else: a faint etched shape… The hair fell back over what Tasha thought she had seen, and the woman raised a frail hand to the necklace at her throat, delicately, limply, like Scarlett O’Hara.
“I took these pearls from a woman in Arizona,” she said, smiling fondly at the memory.
“Took them? You stole them?”
The woman lowered her hand and stared hard at Tasha, her blue eyes two chips of the iceberg that sank Titanic.
“I took them.”
“What were you doing in Arizona?”
The smile broadened a little.
“I was a rat. I was a rat in Arizona.”
There was a flutter in the air, announcing the arrival of the next train, and a scrap of paper tumbleweeded down the platform away from where the two women talked.
“How did you get here? To Chicago, I mean.”
“This isn’t Chicago.”
Tasha just stared at her. Yes, it was best to remain neutral.
“This isn’t Chicago,” the woman repeated. “It’s all the same.”
The train slithered up alongside them, moving the woman’s hair back over her eyes and shifting Tasha’s tight ponytail.
“Give me your earrings,” the woman said. The blue eyes seemed very clear suddenly; the rheumy look of a moment ago had evaporated. “Give them to me.”
Tasha took a step back, closer to the safe bustle of the commuters.
“Give them to me, you bitch. You little bitch, give them to me.” The woman’s voice had been calm; even and smooth like a doctor.
“Tasha, what the hell are you doing?” It was Gina, impatient, peevish. “I’ve been waiting for you on the street. Come on. Let’s take the Lift.”
“If Gina hadn’t come, do you think that lady would’ve attacked you?” Dinah asks, caught in the tension, her voice tight like a wire.
“I really don’t know,” Tasha sighs. “Maybe. There were other people around so I feel like she’d have to have been completely batshit to try something for real, but I don’t know. It was so weird. She was so…intense.”
“I wonder if she was really from Arizona,” Dinah says. “I mean, she was probably out of her mind and didn’t know what she was saying.”
Something about the woman is like an itch Tasha can’t scratch.
“She had a manicure,” Tasha says.
“A homeless lady with a little class,” says Dinah with a small laugh, but Tasha doesn’t join her. She thinks about the woman’s laughing face, her hair blonde only four or five inches from the ends, the rest dark where the brunette within had reclaimed the scalp. Tasha thought of the pearls she wore and wondered who she’d taken them from. The woman had been like seeing a new coin at the bottom of a murky pond—the shine still visible but slowly rusting over, clouding with algae. Tasha decides to change the subject.
“How much food do you have left, Dinah?”
Against her back, Tasha feels Dinah shift again. She’s either looking at her food—does she really have so little that she has it all stacked around her? —or she’s uncomfortable. Either way, it’s a sensitive subject, one they have avoided. Tasha has gone out to Jewel more than once—her own kitchen pathetically bare, as she often ate at the food court in the Apiary with her discount—but she has been unable to find any food flat enough to slide under the front door to what has become Dinah’s prison. Tasha has examined the door when she’s ventured out to the grocery store—metal, like Tasha’s, impossible to break down. Nothing was wood anymore (too few trees), so Dinah sits inside her metal box, waiting. For what? Courage, Tasha supposes, or inevitability. Perhaps she hopes Dale will die on his own—hide the problem until it resolves itself. Dinah hasn’t talked about food, nor does she ever bring up the issue of the keys. Had Dinah been Gina, Tasha would have shrugged off her silence, would have thought something unforgiving like, “If sh
e doesn’t wanna talk about it, she doesn’t wanna talk about it. I can’t make her talk.” But Tasha had known, of course, that friends do make friends talk—if they care enough. And Tasha supposes that’s the key. Dinah, this woman she barely knows, a voice through the concrete, deserves care. And though her fears are censored, yellow tape wrapping around the subject like a crime scene—Do Not Enter. Danger Ahead—Tasha feels drawn to enter anyway.
“Some,” says Dinah finally. “Beef jerky. Canned pineapples. Vacuum-sealed green beans. Some stuff.”
“Dinah…” Tasha reaches for the caution tape, flexing emotional muscles she hasn’t used in years.
“I’m fine,” Dinah says.
“Dinah…”
“I’m fine, Tasha! I’m fine!”
Dinah is wrapping up in her fear, pulling the caution tape around her like a shawl. They lapse into silence. Dinah must be sitting very still, because Tasha hears nothing, feels nothing through the wall. She feels stiff. She’d tried, and for what? They have become statues in their dread: despite the days passed in verbal company, they are strangers, separated by a wall. Tasha thinks of all the ways things could be different. Would it be better to be Chipped at this point? A Minker prowling the city? She could have been. She almost had been.
When Tasha and Gina had entered the lobby on the seventy-fifth floor of the Daly Center, the automated voice of a woman had greeted them from somewhere over their heads:
“Welcome to Cybranu. If you have an appointment, please enter the room to your right. If you are here for more information about the Cybranu health implant, please enter the room to your left.”
Between the two doors was a gold plaque with the Cybranu address and their motto. Underneath it in small print was the address for headquarters, which Tasha noticed was at the Apiary of all places. Tucked away on one of the upper floors, she guessed, with other super-secret, ultra-rich organizations. Three people, two men and a woman, entered behind Tasha and Gina. They moved in a group to the room on the left. Tasha heard a video begin its loop as the trio set off the motion sensors.
“Are you worried about the constant threat of infection? Do you want a happy, healthy, easy life? At Cybranu, with a simple procedure, you can get a new lease on—”
Tasha entered the room to the right. The fluorescent light, white walls and white furniture gave it a blinding effect and she blinked, looking around to see where Gina had gone. She was already at a white desk, talking in a low voice to a white-clad man seated behind it. They were taking the white thing a little far, Tasha thought. Tasha approached the immaculate desk, but the man leaned to the side to address her around Gina’s body.
“Take a seat until you’re called to the desk, please.”
“Okayy…” She dragged the word out to express her annoyance. The man didn’t even notice and resumed speaking to Gina. Tasha sucked her teeth. “Nice guy.”
Tasha “took a seat” and turned to the little table that held a stack of digital magazines. The one on top was indexed with all the fashion publications, Cosmo already opened by a previous patient clicking through the issues. It was the old March issue—she’d already read it—so she picked up a current events Glass instead, clicking into Chicago Today and studying the headlines. The Lincoln Park Zoo’s expansion efforts had been completed, one article read. The piece included a picture of a grinning guy wearing the brown safari-esque uniform of a zoo employee. Beside him was a man in what appeared to be an expensive suit, his smile lax and tan. Together they stood outside the cage of a panther slouching on a synthetic rock. The blackness of the cat dominated the photo, its eyes volcanic. Unlike the employee and the executive, who looked into the camera, the animal’s gaze was fixated on the men just beyond its reach. Its posture gave the impression of indifference, but Tasha sensed that if the bars separating it from its wardens were removed, the headline for the paper would have been very different: Captive Cat Mauls Captors; Imprisoned Panther Punishes Penitentiary. You can only cage a hot coal for so long. Tasha was still staring at the picture of the panther when Gina sat down.
“So?” asked Tasha, clicking out of the article.
“He asked my cup size.”
“Shut up!”
“Okay, he didn’t. But he is kind of hot.”
“Oh Christ….”
The man’s voice leapt across the lobby,
“Lockett, Natasha?”
Tasha looked up at the voice and blinked. After staring at the panther, the room seemed blindingly white. She’d readjusted her eyes and her purse, then stood to approach the desk.
Chapter 4
“Did Gina know you didn’t get it? The Chip, I mean?”
Tasha had been half-dozing against the wall and Dinah’s voice startles her. She jumps, smacking her head against the wall.
“Um…are you okay?” Dinah’s voice is a little clearer; she must have turned her face toward the wall at the sound of the knock.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Tasha says, rubbing her head. “What did you ask me?”
“If Gina knew that you didn’t get the Chip. I mean, you guys went together. And I’m assuming she…you know…has it. The way you talk about her.”
“Yeah, she got it. And yeah, she knew. The guy in reception turned me away as soon as he found out I didn’t have MINK.”
“You didn’t have cash or an MCP or whatever?”
“I asked to apply for an MCP but he said no. He said some things you had to have MINK for—no MCPs or cash—and the Chip was one.”
“Seems like they had a real specific idea of who they wanted to have the implant,” Dinah yawns. She must have been napping too.
“What did you say?” Tasha is fully awake now and something about the words draws her.
“What? That the Cybranu people had a pretty good picture of who could have the Chip and who couldn’t? I mean, they did, right? No MCPs, no cash. Had to have MINK, and to get MINK, you said you had to either be rich as hell or have a job with a government contract. Did I say something wrong?”
“No,” Tasha says, and rubs her eyes. “I just…no. You’re right. But yeah, Gina was a dick or whatever when she found out I didn’t get it.”
“Ha! I knew it,” Gina had crowed. “Aww, poor Tasha. Maybe I could’ve slipped you my card. Or maybe we can, like, steal someone’s MINK. People do that all the time, right? Instead of stealing someone’s identity, you can just steal their coverage!”
Tasha struggled not to glower.
“I didn’t know MINK was a requirement though, really,” Gina said airily, adopting the role of a Mother Teresa with fake eyelashes, “but it’s probably for the best. I mean, not talking about you, but there’s something to be said for a level of exclusivity.”
Tasha stayed quiet.
Gina flipped her hair out of her face sharply. She tended to get annoyed when Tasha didn’t take her bait.
“Oh, sorry, I should have known,” Gina snarled, glancing at Tasha sideways, “you’re for equal opportunity healthcare.” She used quotey fingers.
Tasha had taken the bait.
“Oh my god, whatever. Who cares about healthcare. I don’t need the Chip anyway. It’s, like, a flea collar. If it was so necessary, they’d let everybody get it, right? They make it sound like all these millions of foreign bio-bugs are going to be swarming us in the streets.”
“They might be,” Gina shrugged, gazing out the window. She was serious now and didn’t want Tasha to know it. Her germophobic tendencies were overshadowed only by her xenophobic ones. “Korea has been in the webnews a lot lately. And Syria. And so,” she shot a look at Tasha before she said it, knowing she was about to turn up the bitch volume, “has the Nation of California. There was that video released of them talking about biological weapons and stuff.”
Tasha stiffened but didn’t look at Gina. She knew this game, the game of swords used under tablecloths. Women, she had thought then. Women, women, women. The trick was to stab without upsetting the tea; arsenic in the brew, swallowed smoo
th.
Tasha snorted instead of acknowledging the mention of the Nation. “You watch the news? No wonder you’re so worried.”
Still looking out the window, Gina shrugged. “The Nation has made a lot of threats. They’re terrorists.”
“I think they have a lot more to fear from the States,” Tasha laughed, trying to sound as if she actually thought it was funny.
They had been quiet then. As the L made its way up the tracks heading North, Tasha gazed at the buildings surrounding their little train. Willis Tower was dwarfed by the new additions—after it was stripped of “Sears” its growth was stunted as the city grew around it. Its closest architectural neighbor, after all, was one hundred and eighty-four stories, one of dozens of swaying pillars in the Chicago sky.
Other than that, not much had changed since Tasha was a child and visiting Chicago for trips to grandma’s house—the city continued to get taller and wider, a blob of expanding steel: the vehicles became smaller and quicker, some airborne; the noise quieter and quieter. Neither Tasha nor Gina had been born in the time when the L would still jerk perilously around corners, the nails-on-slate squealing of the brakes as the train rounded each bend adding another layer to the already clamorous cityscape. They were children of the new L—no piercing mechanical wails punctuated the quiet: the L of Tasha’s grandmother’s Chicago had been replaced car by car with a hushed metal snake of a machine whose doors whispered open at each stop and, when it started into motion, did so with hardly a jerk, continuing like polished oil up the transparent alloy track. The L whose roar had once been the soundtrack of Chicago had been de-barked, its growl phased out as Chicagoans demanded less noise pollution.