A Long, Long Sleep

by Anna Sheehan

  Fortunately, the school day was over. I climbed into the limoskiff that Mr.

  Guillory had arranged for me. I rather wished I could have taken the public solarskimmer with Bren and a handful of others, but I didn’t want to scorn Mr.

  Guillory’s offerings. He was my executor, after all. He should know what was best for me.

  It took me some minutes to realize that my limoskiff had settled beside my condo. The skiff’s ride was so smooth that I hadn’t even noticed it had stopped.

  I really liked these new hover boats. I was told that the technology was barely thirty years old, but it had already replaced pretty much every land vehicle on the planet. They had been designed to skim over the water, to be used in swampy areas, such as the Everglades, but those who had them thought them so wonderful they continued to use them on land. It saved wear on the roads, and without friction and drag wearing on the machine, it was cheap and easy to power them on solar energy.

  Oddly, the hover boat companies were one business on which UniCorp had no monopoly. The corporation had tried buying out each of the manufacturers in turn, but the solar battery that ran the boats was public domain. It had been depatented during the Dark Times so that isolated areas could create their own renewable power. According to Guillory, it had proved dangerous to use NeoFusion to power the vehicles. NeoFusion™ reactors became very volatile when the protective casing was damaged. While it wasn’t radioactive or inherently deadly —NeoFusion being the “safe, clean alternative” to almost all power needs —if involved in a crash, it almost invariably resulted in a fire, due to massive amounts of lost heat. Using solar power on the skimmers made them in finitely safer, and they were so convenient and elegant that UniCorp hadn’t been able to bury them with competitors. Thus they were free from UniCorp’s intrigues.

  The boats did have one flaw — also their strength —in that they could travel over anything. The transportation commission had to create magnetic barriers that prevented the boats from passing over roads and onto pedestrian areas.

  All roads now had red- and- yellow magnetic curbs, and those UniCorp did have a monopoly on. Guillory had made a joke when he explained all this: “If you can’t beat ’em, box ’em.” UniCorp contained all their competition, one way or another.

  I crawled my way out of the skiff, over the red- and- yellow curb. My limoskiff turned on its cushion of air and headed off to the garage. I dragged myself through the corridors to my condo. I pressed my hand to the antiquated fingerprint pad, and the door opened. I wondered if the old print pad still had a record of Xavier’s fingerprints, as it had had before I was stassed. Apparently most doors opened to retinal scan now.

  When I opened the door, I heard a noise. Patty and Barry weren’t supposed to be home until after five: they both worked in the accounting department of the Uni Building. I swallowed. “Hello?” I called out. No response. My parents’

  training of hypervigilance and paranoia burbled in the back of my mind, and I poked my head around the corner, prepared to run in the opposite direction if the noise proved to be a threat.

  It was not. A leash tied to the door handle of my studio was attached to a dog.

  And not just any dog. This was a tall, silky- furred Afghan, his hair the same soft blond as my own. He stood up when he saw me, wagging his tail. I fell to my knees, wrapping my arms around his shoulders. With a digni fied whine, the dog pushed his long nose to my cheeks and began to lick my face.

  My stass- weakened eyes filled with tears, this time out of joy. It was the best feeling in the world to come home to something soft and friendly, something to love me unconditionally. And this wasn’t just a dog. He was an Afghan, the prince of dogs, the four- legged human! My fingers laced in his silky fur, and I felt a piece of paper hanging by a string from his collar. I lifted it up, wiping the tears from my eyes to read it. for rose on her first day of school.

  I sniffed. It must have come from Mr. Guillory. Or maybe Patty and Barry had arranged to have him delivered. Mrs. Sabah? I didn’t know. It didn’t matter.

  “You’re beautiful!” I told the dog. “The most beautiful dog in the world. So I’m giving you the most beautiful name: Zavier.”

  Zavier panted and licked my face again. Even school didn’t seem like such an ordeal, not as long as I could have my Zavier waiting for me at home.

  I’d always wanted a dog, ever since I was a kid. The closest I’d had wasn’t even mine. It was Xavier’s, and in truth, it wasn’t even a dog.

  ...

  I was fourteen, and Xavier was my best friend. He’d asked me over to his condo to look at his new toy.

  It was a little black box. It looked a bit like a cell. It didn’t strike me as being anything that would cause Xavier’s green eyes to brighten with such enthusiasm, but he was showing it to me as proudly as if it were the doorway to enlightenment. “What is it?”

  Xavier pressed a button on the side, and a Doberman suddenly appeared the middle of the room. “Here, boy!” Xavier said, snapping his fingers, and the dog obediently strode up to him and panted, his head to one side. “Isn’t it neat?” he said. “It’s a holographic dog. They had them at the computer expo. Call him; he’ll come to you. It has programmed reactions just like a real dog. It’ll react to everything you say, and it knows a thousand tricks. Speak, boy!”

  The dog sat down obediently and barked twice.

  “Why didn’t they program it to speak English?” I asked.

  “Because then it wouldn’t be a dog,” Xavier said, as if it were obvious.

  “It’s still not a dog. What’s the point of a dog if you can’t pet it?”

  Xavier shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just cool. It has settings for more than a hundred different breeds, and the behavior modes for all of them.” Xavier was poking at the controls on the box. The Doberman switched to a Dalmatian and then to a dachshund. “What breed should I set it to?”

  “An Afghan,” I said without hesitation. He poked at the controls until a regal, silky- furred Afghan stood in the middle of the room. It barked.

  “There,” Xavier said. “I think I can figure out how to hack it into the touch pad for our door. I can get it to bark at anyone who enters.”

  “A real dog would do that, too.”

  “Yeah, but my mom’s allergic. Come on! You have to admit it’s a cool tech.”

  I perched on a stool and snapped my fingers. The holo-graphic dog looked at me and then sauntered over, his ears pricked. “I will grant you that.” I passed my hand through its head and waved it at Xavier. “Still would be better if you could pet it.”

  Xavier shook his head. “I don’t get you. I thought you liked dogs.”

  “I love dogs. That’s how I know this isn’t one.”

  “If you love dogs so much, how come you won’t get one of your own?”

  It had been a bit of an issue in the past, when I’d picked up runaway dogs from other members of Unicorn and played with them for hours, keeping them from their owners. “I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  I sighed. My parents were scheduled to oversee the coordination of the Luna colony, and they were going to be gone for months. “You remember that gazelle I had when I was eight?”

  Xavier shook his head. “I was two. How could I remember?”

  “Oh. Well, anyway, I had this gazelle. The stables took care of it for me, but it died while Mom and Daddy were on vacation, and I wasn’t there. I felt awful about that. I’d hate to do that to a dog.”

  “I could take care of it while you were sleeping,” Xavier said. “I’m sure my mom wouldn’t mind, not if it was Mr. Fitzroy’s.”

  I shook my head. “No. I’d hate it if I ever had to really be away from Mom and Daddy, and that’s what I’d be doing. I wouldn’t want to pop in and out of a dog’s life like that. He wouldn’t understand.”

  Xavier grunted. “Forget the dog —hell, I’m human. I barely understand, and you’re my best frie
nd.”

  I frowned at that. “Don’t you have friends at your school?”

  “Of course I do, but they’re not you. Besides, they all tease me for having a name like Xavier, even the guys who say they’re my friends. They call me ‘ X-man’ and say things like, ‘Exactly, Xavier!’ and ‘Are you doing extra credit, Xavier?’ I don’t even pronounce the damned X, but they all do.”

  “Well, Zavier,” I said, pronouncing it how he liked it. “Tell them to stop.”

  He shrugged. “They’re guys. You can’t stop ’em. It doesn’t matter. You’d never do something like that. I can’t wait until I’m old enough to go to the same schools you do. You and I have always been best friends.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me before. I’d always thought of him like a little brother, but now that our ages were pretty close together, he was much more like a friend. “You are my best friend,” I admitted. “Come to think of it, you’re my only friend.”

  He scoffed. “Now, I know that’s not true.”

  “It is, you know,” I said. I didn’t know why I didn’t feel sad about that. I got off my stool and joined Xavier at the table. I reached up to ruffle his hair. As long as I knew he’d be there in the next condo, tearing some computer apart, it didn’t matter that I didn’t have anyone else.

  “Come on,” Xavier said, cringing away from my maternal tousle. “I’ll bet you’ve got lots of friends.”

  “Not really. You know Mom doesn’t approve of any of the kids at school, and she doesn’t like me going out without her.” I frowned. “I’ve never had any other friends. Not since the caretaker’s daughter when I was little.”

  “How little?” Xavier asked.

  “I think I was three or four. It was at our last house, in the city.” I hadn’t thought of Sarah for years. “She was bigger than me, all glamorous and adventurous. We’d spend the whole day together. We used to dress in matching out fits.”

  “At four?”

  “Yeah. I guess it was her idea. But other than her, you’re the only real friend I’ve ever had.”

  “Didn’t you get invited to a sleepover the other day?”

  “Polly only invited me because her mom was trying to get a promotion.”

  “What?”

  “Her parents work for UniCorp.”

  “Oh,” said Xavier. “Well, so do mine.”

  “True . . . but we’ve been friends forever. Almost as long as you’ve been alive,” I reminded him.

  Xavier turned back to his box. “Do you ever think how it’s weird?” he asked. “I mean, you haven’t grown up the same way I do. I remember when you used to tower over me, and you told me stories because I couldn’t read yet. Now we’re like the same height. Almost the same age.”

  “I’m fourteen!” I said indignantly, and pulled myself up to my full height, which was still a few centimeters taller than him. “You’re only eleven.”

  He looked at me rather pointedly. “My birthday was three months ago. I’m twelve.”

  I blinked. I’d been out of stasis for over a month. I hadn’t realized my last stint had been so long. “I missed it? Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll get you something to make up for it. What do you want?”

  Xavier’s eyes searched my face. He hesitated for a long time before he said,

  “Nothing.”

  “No, really.”

  “No, really, nothing. I just wish you could have been there. That would have been the best present.”

  I smiled. “You’re sweet.”

  “Don’t tell anyone; I’ll never live it down.”

  I touched his shoulder anyway. “I’ve got to go,” I said. “Mom’s taking me to the art supply store and then to the furniture designer. I’m out of burnt sienna.”

  “Oh.” He looked disappointed. “I was kinda hoping you’d stay and help me wire this into the door key.”

  I looked mock horrified. “You want to start a fire? I couldn’t figure out a circuit if my life depended on it!”

  “But the threat of exploding wall sockets adds so much more excitement to the project!” He laughed.

  I shook my head. “I’ll just jinx you. Besides, I’d miss giving my opinion on color wheels. Mom’s redecorating the front lobby, and she wants my help.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Xavier said. He turned back to his new holographic dog circuit.

  Something bothered me. I wondered if Xavier knew I was going back into stasis soon. “Ahm . . . I wanted to tell you. Mom and Daddy are going on to Luna next week.”

  Xavier’s head snapped toward me, his eyes wide. “For how long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He stared at me openmouthed for a moment before he composed his face.

  “Well. Just don’t miss my next birth-day, okay?”

  I reached forward to ruffle his blond hair. “Not for anything, Xavy.”

  He blushed. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that. I’m not a kid anymore.”

  “No,” I said. “You’re not. But you are my best friend.”

  The holographic Afghan barked. “Girl’s best friend,” Xavier said, and then he barked, too.

  Now I had a new best friend. He wasn’t anything like as good as Xavier, but he was the best I could have had under the circumstances.

  Zavier’s real name, according to the information sheet I found in the kitchen, was Freefoot’s Desert Roads, and he was a retired champion, having come an inch away from Best in Show three years before. He was well trained in general obedience and had a smattering of rudimentary guard training. He had a regularly scheduled grooming every two weeks. It was suggested that I give him a light once- over every day with a brush I found along with his papers. I asked him if he preferred Roads or Desert, or a dozen other combinations of his show name, but he didn’t prick his ears at any of them. His call name must have been something entirely different, and I had no note of it, so Zavier was as good a name as any.

  Patty and Barry were obviously expecting Zavier, as Barry came home with a bag of dog food. I couldn’t bring myself to ask if they had arranged for me to have him or if it was Mr. Guillory. But it didn’t matter. Zavier was mine now.

  That night, he curled up at the foot of my bed and kept my feet warm.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t quite keep the nightmares away.

  – chapter 6—

  The nightmares were relentless. They had been coming almost every night, ever since I came out of stass. In my dreams I walked through long, empty hallways.

  At first they were the corridors between the apartments at Unicorn, but the night I got Zavier, they were the halls at Uni Prep, complete with neo- Gothic windows and stone arches. Always there were mirrors around, confusing and frightening. I would catch movement and turn to see what caused it, to find it was only me, looking back at myself. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for in these empty hall-ways, but I was afraid to find it.

  Like always, I woke in a cold sweat, shouting for my mom. But the moment I fully awoke and realized she wasn’t there, I was glad. She’d have been ashamed of me, calling out like an undisciplined child.

  “Would she really have been ashamed?” asked Dr. Bija the next morning. We’d had a special session scheduled for the morning of my second day at school, so that I could talk over what the first day had been like. When Mina had asked how I’d slept, I’d slipped up and told her about the dreams.

  “Probably,” I said. “Mom always kept herself composed. It’s best if you can re fine yourself, so that people will only see perfection when they look at you.

  That’s what she said.”

  Mina frowned. “Do you think anyone can really be perfect?”

  I shrugged. “Like a statue, I think. If you can file off the parts that are rough, eventually you’ll have a personality like Michelangelo’s David.”

  She laughed. “Do you really think you have the power to file off your nightmares, l
ike you would your fingernails?”

  “I don’t know.” I sighed. I wished I could.

  “So, how did school go yesterday?” Mina prompted.

  I shrugged. “I don’t understand anything.”

  “It’s only your first day. But I wasn’t talking about your academic performance.

  Do you have any friends?”

  “Not really. Well, Bren, I guess.”

  “Bren?”

  “Brendan Sabah? His grandfather’s apparently Guillory’s second or something.”

  “Ah, yes. I remember from the press conference. Do you like him?”

  “He let me sit with him at lunch.”

  “That must be a comfort,” she said. “It’s good to have friends.”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t sure that the relationship I had with Bren was exactly that of friendship. It wasn’t anything like what I’d had with Xavier, even before we started dating, and I hadn’t had any friends outside of Xavier, so I had no other point of comparison. All I knew was that I needed Bren badly, but I didn’t feel as comfortable around him as I had with Xavier. That left me with a confused, unbalanced feeling that I wasn’t sure I liked. Though I did like Bren. A lot.

  I left the session trying to figure out exactly what it was with Bren. I wasn’t sure I knew. But at the very least, Bren did treat me with friendly deference. I was glad. I badly needed a friendly face later that day, after my history class.

  Bren caught me in the hallway as I fled, unexcused, from the horrors I had been learning in this second class. Yesterday, hearing about the preparations for the Dark Times had made me feel terrible enough. But today, as the Dark Times themselves loomed larger and larger on the wall screen, I shrank smaller and smaller, until I had to get out of there. I ran past Bren without seeing him, without seeing anything. “Rose!” His voice echoed in the otherwise empty hallway. “You all right?”

  I whirled.

  “Hey, what is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Ghosts. That’s all that was left of my family, my friends, my Xavier. I choked on bile, looking desperately around the halls. There, a garbage incinerator! I stuck my head over the pan and vomited, losing the few precious morsels of food I’d managed to choke down over lunch.