Goodbye for Now

by Laurie Frankel

  In a small room at the end of one hall, a tiny boy sat propped up with pillows clutching a worn yellow rabbit and crying. He had tubes in his arms, in his nose, from his gut. He had no hair and no color and hardly any flesh covering his garishly on-display bones. He wasn’t crying because of the tubes or the tiny pale dying baldness of himself, however. He was crying because his father was sitting up next to him in bed with a laptop on the tray table, painstakingly trying to get his son to compose e-mails to him.

  “What did you do today?” asked the dad gently.

  “Played with Rabbit,” the kid whispered.

  “Type that to me,” said the dad.

  “Don’t wanna,” said the kid.

  “What else did you do?”

  “Shots,” said the kid.

  “Type that to Daddy.”

  “Don’t wanna,” cried the kid.

  “Christ, he can’t be more than three or four,” said Sam.

  “Actually, he’s seven and a half,” said Dr. Dixon. “Still a bit young for e-mailing though. Plus he’s missed a lot of school.”

  Next door, an even littler girl in a pink nightgown was crying and crying in her bed with her arms stretched out toward her parents. “Up pees, up pees, uuuupppeeeese,” she was wailing over and over. Her parents sat two feet away at the end of the bed, also crying but immobile. Between them, facing the little girl, was an open laptop, an open video chat, an enabled camera. “Just a few more minutes today, baby,” her mother said through her own tears. “Just a few more minutes. Mommy and Daddy need this for later. Tell Mommy what’s your favorite book. Tell Mommy what a cow says.”

  Meredith was paler than the little boy in the first room. She excused herself but didn’t make it quite as far as the bathroom before she threw up on the floor in the hallway.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Dixon,” she managed.

  “Happens all the time,” he said.

  “Not about that,” she said and went to find the ladies’ room.

  “They’re trying to get enough electronic communication out of their kids?” Sam asked. Though he knew.

  “Yes.”

  “Before it’s too late?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s already too late.”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Dixon. “And also no. It’s not late enough. These kids haven’t learned to read yet, to write, to use a computer. And they never will. All these parents are doing is wasting the time they have left.”

  Sam nodded, looking at his shoes, cowed, but then he whispered, “Think of it from their point of view though. The kids are going to die anyway. The parents want something to remember them by.”

  “It shouldn’t be this,” said Dr. Dixon.

  Sam was having trouble finding his voice. “How do we know what will help these parents remember? What will help them feel better?”

  “Helping the parents feel better isn’t my job. My patients are the kids. They have months, sometimes weeks, sometimes days left. They shouldn’t have to spend them inputting themselves into a computer.”

  “You keep running tests,” Sam said quietly. “Administering shots and chemo and medications with horrible side effects. Waking them up in the night to take their blood or their temperature. Hooking them up to scary machines. Confining them to bed. Drugging them senseless. Is that any way to spend the time they have left?”

  “The procedures are sometimes brutal, but often they extend the time these children have. I’m not justifying myself to you, and I’m not getting into a medical discussion with a computer programmer. I can’t bring cancer up to the ward to show it the misery it’s causing. But I can bring you up to show you the misery you’re causing. And I’m telling you to stop.”

  “It won’t work for children,” said Sam. “It was never intended to. I’m happy to explain that to anyone you want me to or do anything else you think would help. I get that your priority is your patients and that hospitals treat patients. We’re only trying, humbly, to take care of who’s left.”

  On the way out, they saw one of those flyers with the tear-off phone numbers in strips at the bottom. In big letters at the top it said, “New Life for Your Loved One.” And then smaller, lower down, “The time to prepare to RePose with your loved one is now. Do it before you lose them forever. Learn how today!” There was only one phone number left hanging off the bottom of the poster. Meredith ripped the whole thing off the wall, balled it in her fist, and threw it in the street. Then she got in the car and cried, not gentle weeping but violent sobbing. Sam thought she might throw up again. Sam felt like he might throw up himself.

  “What are we going to do?” she sobbed.

  “I don’t know.” Sam was quiet, and that made her louder.

  “We are killing those kids.”

  “No, we’re not.”

  “We are ruining their lives.”

  “No, we’re not.”

  “They’re already so godforsaken miserable, and we’re making them more miserable. We are.”

  “No, we aren’t.”

  “Jesus, Sam. Fuck the semantics. No, okay, we didn’t give them cancer, fine. But these kids have three horrible weeks to live when they’re owed another ten decades, and we’re making them spend those three weeks in front of a goddamn computer.”

  “No. We’re not. We’re not, Merde. We are not making them do anything. We are not making their parents do anything.”

  “We have made them an offer they can’t refuse.”

  “No, we haven’t. RePose is not intended for children. It was never intended for children. It won’t work for these kids—”

  “But they don’t know that. These people have no hope, so they have to cling to whatever they can find, no matter how small and pathetic it is.”

  “It’s not our job to tell these parents, ‘You have three weeks with your kid. Go to a park. Go do something fun. Don’t waste time on your laptop.’ There are social workers. There are grief counselors—”

  “We have made RePose available out in the world. The most desperate people, the most miserable, broken ones, those are the people who are going to grab on and not let go. They can’t say no.”

  “That’s not on us,” said Sam. “Just because it can’t help everyone doesn’t mean it can’t help some people.”

  “Just because it can help some people,” said Meredith, “doesn’t let us off the hook for hurting others.”

  “They can’t have what they want.” Sam was quiet again. “They aren’t getting kids who live to be a hundred. No one can give them that. I don’t know whose fault that is, but it isn’t ours.”

  “We’re not helping.”

  “We are. Maybe not these people because their kids are too young. But think of Mr. and Mrs. Benson. For people with older DLOs, we’re giving them the only thing we can: a chance to see their kid again.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  “It’s all we’ve got, Merde. It’s all anybody’s got.” And then, when she didn’t say anything, he added, “It made you feel better.”

  “That’s not enough either,” she said.

  She called Dash and left a shaky, rambling message he couldn’t quite make out which involved words like “emergency,” “disaster,” and “vomit.” When he called back, panicked, Meredith wouldn’t come to the phone, and Sam didn’t know how or even whether to reassure him. No, she wasn’t dying. No, he wasn’t dying. No, the software hadn’t been hacked and the salon hadn’t been robbed and Mt. Rainier hadn’t erupted, and everything was just fine except for how it wasn’t. Dash said he’d be on the first flight out in the morning. In between, Meredith didn’t say much. She also didn’t eat much or sleep much. She mostly sat on the sofa wrapped in a blanket and stared out the window. Sam tried to feed her and failed. He tried to distract her with the ball game then a movie then a game of Rummikub and failed. He tried to get her to come to bed with him and failed and so finally went alone, but he couldn’t sleep either. He couldn’t get that little girl’s cries out of his
head, her parents’ faces, Dr. Dixon’s quiet anger. Meredith crying in the car. He couldn’t get the smell of the place out of his nose.

  But he also felt protective of the good they’d done, the good they could do. It wasn’t fair to take it away just because some people—some sleep-deprived, desperate, driven-insane, put-through-hell people—couldn’t understand that it wouldn’t work for children. He felt terrible for them. He did, of course. But Sam felt protective of his users. And, weirdly, darkly, in a way that was hard to put his finger on, he felt protective of his projections too. What would happen to them if Dead Mail died?

  “Listen,” Dash began the next morning, “I’ve brought Hellner’s chocolate cake, the world’s best breakfast food, and I hauled my ass out of bed at three this morning to be here. Sam loves you and I love you, and what’s more, Sam and I both feel sad about dying little kids and their parents. Obviously. So let’s just dial it back a little bit.”

  “I haven’t even said anything.” Meredith looked at him darkly from under puffy eyelids. None of them had slept. All of them looked it.

  “Well it’s time,” said Dash, “so talk.”

  “I feel like crap,” said Meredith and started crying again. “All the time. I’m so tired. I’m so sad. If this were right, would I have to defend it to everyone with an internet connection? If this were right, would it feel like this?”

  Sam started in on the benevolent miracle of the technology and the boon to users and all the people they had helped and would help and could help, but Dash interrupted. “Yeah, it would.”

  “Would what?”

  “Would feel like this. It’s new. It’s weird. There are complex issues involved. There are moral gray areas. There is untrod ground. You think it wasn’t like this for the people who invented Pong? Hell, you think it wasn’t like this for the people who invented fire? The villagers were all, ‘Oh no! This technology is evil.’ And the guy who invented fire was like, ‘No, it’s great. You can stay warm even in winter and melt water when it freezes and cook your meat so you don’t get worms and take a bath sometimes, which, no offense buddy, I’m inventing soap next because man do you stink. And you think that’s cool—wait’ll you see how it protects the village. And you can read after dark! I mean, first we need to develop written language, but still!’ And the villagers were all, ‘Children will get burned.’ And Fire Guy was like, ‘Think how much better this will make their lives. Just keep them a safe distance away from the fire.’ And the villagers were like, ‘Meh. Not worth it. You’re evil.’ Then, ironically, they burned him at the stake.”

  Meredith didn’t want to laugh, but she couldn’t help it. “You didn’t see them, Dash.”

  “I have an appointment after lunch,” he said.

  “You do?”

  “Of course.”

  “You hate hospitals.”

  “Everyone hates hospitals.”

  “It’s so awful there.”

  “I know. But after I got off the phone with Sam yesterday, I called Dr. Dixon and set up a time to go over.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s important. It upset you. It upsets me. It raises questions about what we’re doing and how and why. I know what’s going on—I understand—but I need to see.”

  “Oh Dash. You didn’t have to … you don’t have to—”

  “Yes I do,” he said. “Of course I do.”

  Meredith went downstairs to be in Salon Styx. Dash and Sam went back to the hospital. They brought the cake, which none of them had been able to even think about eating, and left it in the family accommodations room. While Dash met with Dr. Dixon, Sam sat in the family room and tried to look open, kind, and available in case anyone wanted to talk. People came and went. They all looked broken, exhausted. Sam himself was red-eyed and sleepless, but these parents were pale like their veins held less blood than his. They looked nauseated and terrified, like even opening their mouths was dangerous, like cracking clamped-shut lips might release torrents of vomit, screaming, wailing, and curses. They glanced emptily at one another, at books and magazines whose pages never turned, and said nothing. Sam sat for an hour, then two. People left and were replaced by others who looked exactly the same miserable way. Sam wanted to stand up and clear his throat, give a little speech about how their children couldn’t RePose, he was so sorry, so very, terribly sorry, and was there anything else at all he could do to help. But he couldn’t find the strength or the voice to do it. These people didn’t look like they had the strength to do anything either, but they kept doing it anyway.

  He walked out into the hall, sat against the vending machine with his tablet, and called Meredith in the salon.

  “How is it?” she said.

  “The same.”

  “Awful?”

  “Yes.”

  There was nothing to add, so they just sat there and looked at each other.

  “I know it’s not your fault,” she said after a while.

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  “We can’t shut it down,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “We have to do something though.”

  “I know.”

  She put her fingers over her heart, then to her lips, then up against the camera. He did the same. Then he went back into the family room to sit and wait some more.

  After a while, Dash came in and sat down next to Sam. They looked grimly at each other but said nothing. “Did you find anyone to talk to?” Dash asked finally.

  Sam shook his head. “You?”

  Dash didn’t answer. “When I was in third grade, my friend Kevin and I were playing in the creek behind his house. His little sister Lena had followed us out. We kept yelling at her to go home, leave us alone, no girls allowed—that sort of thing. There was this part where you had to walk across a log over the water, but Lena was scared. Too little. She was only five. She stood on the other side and screamed for him to help her over, but we were glad to ditch her finally. Then she got brave I guess, or desperate, I don’t know, and started to walk across, but she slipped. She fell in the water, hit her head on the log. The creek wasn’t even knee-deep, not even on her, but she was shaking and convulsing. She was facedown and swallowing water, choking, not coming up. We ran over—we were there almost instantly—pulled her face up by her hair, got her mouth out of the water, dragged her over to the bank. He stayed. I ran and got their mom.

  “She’d had a seizure. They thought it was from hitting her head when she fell off the log, but no, she fell off the log because of the seizure. Tumor. Brain cancer. Quick. She was gone six weeks later. While she was in the hospital I remember thinking, even at eight years old, that it sucked to be her but not as much as it sucked to be Kevin. He couldn’t play outside all summer. And then she died, and he came to school in the fall and just sat at his desk and stared into space, and the teacher let him, left him alone. I’d go over to his house, and we’d just sit in his room and hold LEGOs, not even play with them or build anything, just kind of shuffle them from hand to hand. So I stopped going over there. By Christmas, they had moved away. My dad said to get away from the memories, and my mom said, ‘Where on earth could they go to get away from those memories?’ ”

  Sam nodded mutely. Then after a while he said, “We feel so bad for our users all day every day, but then you realize they’re the lucky ones. They have memories we can use, but even better, they have memories they can stand. I always thought it wasn’t fair that I have no memories of my mom. But in some ways, no memories is a blessing.”

  Then, out of all sense and order, David Elliot walked incongruously into the room. He was delighted to see them. “Dash! Sam! What are you doing here?”

  Sam felt his heart stop. “Oh David. Oh shit. What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “Are you okay?” Sam took him by the shoulders and squeezed too hard.

  “I’m fine. Are you?”

  �
��Oh thank God. Why are you here?” Sam found himself struggling not to hug David then giving up and hugging him anyway. “Uh, Sam,” he heard Dash saying, “look what’s in his hands.”

  Sam drew back and looked at the sheaf of papers David Elliot was carrying. They were flyers like the one Meredith had ripped off the bulletin board the day before.

  “You!” said Sam.

  “Me?” said David.

  “It’s you!”

  “What’s me?”

  “You’re the one who’s been putting up the goddamn flyers.”

  “Oh, these? Yeah. Cool, huh?”

  Sam briefly lost the power of speech, so Dash took over the interrogation. “David, you’re tormenting these poor parents.”

  “Tormenting?”

  “Why are you doing this?” Sam moaned.

  “I was just … What do you mean? I was trying to help people be able to use RePose. You know, after their loved ones … you know.”

  “Why?” Sam asked again.

  David blushed. “It helps me so much, you know, seeing my mom, playing her my songs.”

  “Oh David.”

  “I thought I could help other people.”

  “Oh no.”

  “And I need the money.”

  “What do you need money for?”

  “RePosing,” David said sheepishly.

  Sam went over and leaned his forehead against the wall. “It won’t work for little kids, David. They have no electronic memory. They’ve never e-mailed or video chatted or had a Facebook page or anything, so we can’t make a projection for them. Even if we could, they’d just be dying little kids forever.”

  “Oh. Crap.”

  “What service were you planning on offering when people called anyway?”

  “I was just gonna help everyone tech up. You know, like tell them to use a lot of stuff online a lot. Get them video chatting if they aren’t. Sign them up for some online accounts and stuff. I’ve gotten some calls already.”

  “Don’t they realize right away it won’t work for them?” asked Sam.