"Did you come back from the City of Death, Granddad Nicolas? Did they take your computer away? Did they close you off into your own mind? Is your body what happens when they do this? Tell me, Granddad Nicolas, is young Nicolas there? Is my dad? Because if they are, I must go and get them out!"
"Sit down, child," the old man sighed. "Eat your chocolate." She did, but her eyes kept on shaking him.
"You're not going there, do you hear me? You're not going there yet. And, gods be willing, my grandson is not there, either, and, gods be willing, neither is your dad."
"Gods?"
"Yes. I believe in the gods. I pray to them. The gods must exist. They must. Someone must stand above those who do this to us."
Mel
The creature—no, the man—started crying. He looked weak, Meliora suddenly knew, in addition to being so extremely ugly. His skin was as washed-out and shrunken as a leather purse put by a silly five-year-old girl into the wash. His eyes were almost invisible down there in their deep, misshapen holes—small, pale, watery eyes, surrounded by wrinkled, hanging skin and bushy eyebrows of a dull white color.
Some people had white hair, of course. People had all kinds of hair, whatever was fashionable. Mel had changed her own hair more times than she could count. But his white wasn't shiny, healthy, and living, it wasn't...natural. She hated herself for thinking of the word.
The man's shoulders were unnaturally hunched, his cheeks sunken, skin both wrinkled and taut over the sharp cheekbones. His limbs were unnaturally thin. Thinness, just like fatness, came and went in fashions, and it was as easy to flip from one to the other as it was to change the color of your hair—but somehow Mel felt that it wouldn't be easy for this man to become fat. He looked brittle, like a piece of the finest glass, one that you bought and must throw away almost immediately and buy a new one, because it shattered so fast.
She looked at the man with a new worry. You could not just buy a new man.
"Please don't cry, Nicolas." She decided it was now proper to get closer and pat his shoulder reassuringly. "Would you like your pills? Shall I call your medstat for you?"
"No!" the strange man shouted, then laughed through tears. "There is no such abomination in my home, Meliora."
"I'll call one from the shared homes..." But no, he wouldn't want that. So, something else must be done.
"I'll fix you up then, Granddad Nicolas." Somehow I will figure it out. "I'll be a doctor one day. Did you know that, many, many decades ago doctors used to cure disease? I understand now. I understand why my doc asked me to become a doc myself. Granddad Nicolas, before today I never understood what disease was, but I think that you must have one." The man was calm again, smiling vaguely.
"And so, it repeats. The young, eager, and ignorant would cure old age. But where does it lead from there? In whose hands does the power fall? For what purpose?"
He handed her a new chocolate. He also broke a piece off another chocolate bar and put it into his mouth. He had no teeth, so he sucked on it, the sound echoing in his big, empty home.
"Listen to me, Meliora-girl," he said. He sucked again. Mel felt it polite to bite off a piece of her own chocolate. It was the same as before, very delicious. Yet, in a way, she could not feel the taste. The man's brittle limbs were trembling and Mel noticed that, though hers looked very different from his, they were trembling, too.
"You asked for the truth, girl. The truth is I won't live much longer. I am a goner, as they say. Or used to say. You can't cure me. At this point, no one can. I chose it like this. And, my girl, there is no need to tell me how it was fifty years ago. I was there."
She took a deep breath. She let it out.
"And, my girl, I am not really Nicolas' granddad. I am his great-granddad. I saw them all go—my son, my daughter, her son, his daughter, even the little 'unnatural' boy—all of them young, all of them beautiful. But the boy is alive. The boy must be alive still. The gods would have told me if he weren't. I am sure of it."
"You had a son and a daughter?"
"Does this sound to you like stuff from the fairytales?"
She nodded.
"Even fairytales, Meliora, hold bits of truth. It is not an easy thing to gather in one place, truth. Devious. Slippery."
He sucked on another chocolate piece, sprinkling saliva on his shirt. No serving device came to clean him up. Such a large home and so—empty. He remained silent, and she didn't dare to touch him or ask another question. He seemed as if he'd break if she did. She didn't dare to move from her seat at all.
"Two years from now you will be asked to go to a doctor for everyone's once-in-a-lifetime special doctor's examination and treatment," he said after many minutes had passed. It seemed like he found it hard to speak, like people coming out of the wonderful experiences.
"After this has passed, Meliora girl—unless you refuse it, like I did—your body will no longer seem to age. You will remain young and beautiful. And then, seventeen years from that date, give or take a few, young and beautiful, you will die."
He started coughing. She didn't dare to touch him, to give him juice or water. Besides, for some reason, right now she didn't dare trust her own hands.
"It is not a city, is it, Granddad Nicolas? Death." Her voice was but a whisper.
"The gods only know what it is, child. I'll know it soon enough. But I hope you won't know it for a long time yet."
"No," she said quietly. "I hope I will. It seems that I don't know nearly enough, about anything."
The man shrugged. His shoulders creaked, and he started coughing again.
"Listen, girl," he said after the coughing had passed. His voice was weaker now, he was breathing heavily. "This boy you have seen, my great-grandson, he left something. Computer things. I don't know what they are... Computers, damn them to the seven hells, are the reason for this blasted world! Machines—cold, emotionless, oh-so-wise machines—they brought us to this! I wouldn't have any of it. I would have had my wife give birth properly, too, but she wouldn't have any of that. She's been gone for twenty-eight years now, young and beautiful as any of them... Ah... Perhaps I'll see her again. The gods will let me. But will she know me in this withered shell..."
"Of course she will." Meliora was crying, without even knowing why. "Of course she will!"
"Ah, you're a kind child. Not just polite. Kind. Take the computer stuff. I hate to give it to you, for I think that it is more likely to bring you harm than good, but that boy left it for someone to find. Someone who'd know what to do with it."
"Where is he, Granddad Nicolas?"
"I don't know, child. Find him if you can."
"But where shall I start searching, Granddad Nicolas? Please tell me!"
Please tell me! You must know! You have been here for so long, you know so much! I want to ask you so much! She didn't dare. He looked so tired, so very tired, almost asleep. She didn't believe, somehow she didn't believe, that he could say a word ever again.
"He mentioned something called The City of Life," Granddad Nicolas whispered, barely. Then, "Good bye, Meliora-child."
He fell asleep and wouldn't wake up. For many hours, she just sat there and cried. Then she got up and found and took the only computer in the house. Through her own computer she messaged her frantic mom, then messaged the Annabellan doctor she'd met on the train. A doctor must know what to do with someone who had left for the City of Death.
Doctors
A woman and a man she didn't know took her back to Lucasta. The doctor from the train had sent them to her, they said. They also said that she'd been through an ordeal that no one should have to experience—that no, it wasn't like a wonderful experience in the mall. It was, and it wasn't. They said she needed their help.
She told them that she needed answers. They wouldn't give any.
"The doctors in Lucasta will talk to you."
She refused to take their pills. She didn't trust them—and it was sad, so sad to not be able to trust your new friends. Mom trusted people,
at least most of the time. People trusted people—and people were happy. Happiness was a main ingredient of Lucasta, Annabella, and the rest.
But Mel knew about the City of Life and the City of Death, and she hated Lucasta and Annabella.
They put her on the train and boarded it with her, told her that now she'd sleep, and so would they.
She said, "No, I won't sleep."
They said, "All right."
They stayed awake, too. It made them very uncomfortable. The trip took hours, the train's wheels softly clattering in the semi-darkness of the intercity underground. They could use their computers, of course. Mel thought that if they could not, these two wouldn't have endured. The interweb connection was bad. At least, Mel knew it as a bad connection because of all the old articles she'd read. It took seconds, sometimes minutes to access a feed. Messages took the same time to come. Some messages came garbled, while others, she thought, didn't come at all.
Her guards' eyes were darting now towards their computers, now towards Meliora, now towards the barely-lit walls outside. Their shoulders were hunched, their hands white and tight on their computers.
Meliora hugged her knees and stared at the empty stone walls outside. So much stone in one place, covered by nothing. There truly was nothing to see. She closed her eyes.
"Yes," the woman said, "this is better. You don't have to look at it for the whole time."
Meliora's eyes jerked open at these words. Then, for a moment—just for a moment—she glimpsed a strange shadow flicker outside among the stones. A door, she was sure of it.
When she got out of the train in Lucasta, it was brightlights, and she looked at the ball in the sky. It hurt, so she looked away. She didn't want to damage her eyes. She didn't trust those who would repair them.
***
The man and the woman from Annabella left Meliora at her doctor's office. He wasn't there. A strange woman was in his place. Her hair was very black, even though blonde, bright red, and electric blue were currently in fashion. It was pulled back in an unfashionable tight bun. Her eyes were too narrow, her face too pale, her lips too thin.
When Mel looked closer, she realized that neither the eyes nor the lips were fixed like this; they were normal-sized but looked smaller because of the woman's facial muscles. Facial muscles were taught at school: how to better arrange them to have a more beautiful, happier smile because if people were happy, they smiled, and if people smiled happily, they became happy. It went both ways.
This woman looked as if she'd been taught how to be unhappy. As if she'd passed through the mall's theater but hadn't gotten fixed up.
"What are you staring at!?"
Meliora hadn't heard that tone of voice for a long time. Parents and teachers would sometimes, if rarely, use it with a small child who said "I want to pull the grass from the ground and throw it," or "I want to kick the dog," or "I want to hit my friend." Children could say things like this. Then, they outgrew them.
"I am staring at you!" Meliora snapped back. "It should be clear for anyone with eyes to see!" She didn't offer her name and interweb address.
"Well, stop staring. Go look into a mirror if you wish—because, silly girl, right now you look just like me."
Narrowed eyes, pursed lips, perhaps a pale face—Meliora's knuckles, at least, were pale white from squeezing her hands into fists, so why not the face, too? Yes, she could believe this.
"I am not like you," she said quietly. She didn't have tiny, barely noticeable lines cutting into her skin at the sides of her eyes and mouth. Neither did she have glasses—those over-the-eyes contraptions of frame and glass that sometimes became fashionable but currently weren't. "You're like Great-Granddad Nicolas—whoever, whatever you are. I am not. But, you're not nice like him."
"Hmph. Not that you're nice," the woman said. "I am Doctor Eryn 0x12A0A919, and you shall address me with respect."
It was an order. Mel knew this from the old feeds. No one gave orders today, and everyone addressed everyone with respect.
"Make me!" Meliora shouted, just like in the old feeds.
The woman stepped closer to Meliora. She slapped her so hard that Meliora spat something red, warm, and salty.
"Medstat..." Meliora realized she'd slumped into one of her doctor's cushy chairs, hand pressed hard against her cheek. Her eyes had become so full of tears that she could barely see anything. What was taking the machine so long? "Medstat..."
Nothing.
She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of the other hand and looked.
Doctor Eryn had raised a hand in a sign that meant stop—and the medstat had stopped. Mel's cheek hurt. Her mouth hurt. She'd never been in such pain in her life.
"Medstat..."
The machine remained motionless, except for its small blinking lights.
"It won't treat you," Doctor Eryn said quietly.
"But why... How? They treat, always."
Even if you didn't want them to. You could tell them no about pills and disorders, but you could not tell them no about hurts. They would treat you for your own good. But this one wouldn't. And it hurt.
The machines were to blame for everything, Great-Granddad Nicolas had said.
"Medstat, damn you, come treat me!"
"Cursing now, are we? Did you read these words somewhere, or did you hear them from that senile duffer?"
"He wasn't a senile duffer! He was wrinkled, but he wasn't senile! He was a nice old man! You're a senile duffer! He was ugly, and yet he was better than any of you..."
Slap again, on the other cheek. The room rotated. No medstat.
"You. Shall. Never. Contradict me."
"No. You're right, doctor. I shan't contradict you." Mel shook her head. She staggered towards the door. "I am going home to my and my mom's medstat. Feel free to never message me."
The door wouldn't open. Mel pulled again. A stuck door had happened to her once. A second pull had opened it, and a repairstat had come immediately after.
This door wouldn't open.
No machine came, either.
Meliora turned to face this new doctor. The doctor was blurry—because Mel's eyes were blurred, and her breathing was so heavy that she could not keep her head still. Her legs were shaking.
She'd felt sad for old Nicolas. It had been a strange, yet familiar feeling because she'd also had it for Dad and young Nicolas.
What she felt now wasn't sadness.
"I see that we understand each other." The doctor stepped towards her, and Meliora cringed. "Fear. That's how it is called, girl. You'll need it."
"Is this prison?" Mel whispered.
"Is it? Who knows."
"I want to go home!"
"Do you, really?" The woman smiled. It wasn't pretty. Then she shoved Mel aside and, before Mel could regain her balance, rushed outside. The door slammed closed.
It still wouldn't open for Mel.
***
The windows wouldn't open, either. None of the machines paid any attention to her. Her cheeks swelled and hurt, and as the hours passed her mouth became dry. Her stomach growled.
She found no water in the office, and she found no food. The servingstat and the cookingstat wouldn't respond to her. The machines didn't even blink. They looked dead, as dead as Great-Granddad Nicolas. They didn't even look like evil enemies.
"Or are you, machines, perhaps closed into your own minds? What did she do to you?"
Mel's own computer worked. After some thought, she sent messages to her mom and her friends. She told them she was imprisoned in the doctor's office with no water and no food, that she'd been beaten, and that the machines were dead.
Glad you're having a great time, Mel, my dear, Mom wrote. You know what, Mel? The pear computer is old already. I ate the pear logo and bought a watermelon! I'll go buy one for you, too.
She got similar replies from her friends.
No, you don't understand, Mel hummed. It is not fun. It is scary—it's too wonderful an experience. Help me, Mom. Mom, get me o
ut of here!
Mel, you know that necklace with the cherries? BarbButterScotch123 says there'll be a computer that has many cherries at once! Can you believe it?
Mom...help... It hurts, Mom, the world is rotating and my feet don't listen to me much any more. Mom, is it brightlights already? The windows are shuttered. Mom, I am sick, like a hundred years ago. I think I will die.
Mel, love, when are you coming home? Take your time, of course, you're a big girl now. I'm going shopping with Meliardd1241. We'll also go to the wonderful experiences. Come join us when you can, all right?
You won't die yet. Several variables taken into consideration, you can survive several days without water, and even more without food.
This message had no sender. Mel watched it on the screen and could not believe her eyes. Messages always had senders. A message without a sender was like an arm or a leg without a person attached to it.
Or, like machines who wouldn't heal her or feed her.
So they are, after all, truly watching the feeds.
And not only that. They must be intercepting her messages and sending new ones in her stead. Otherwise, Mom would never, ever ignore her like this.
Or—would she? If the machines would do it, why not Mom, too? If the enemies could break machines like this, could they also not break people?
Of course they can. Currently, they are breaking me.
She was sitting with her back towards a wall, hugging her knees. She got up.
She'd been crying—for Mom, for Dad, for the two Nicolases, for the blood inside her mouth and for her swollen cheeks.
No more.
The world rotated around her again and she coughed. Her dry throat ached. She made a step forward and fell on her face. Her mouth was dry and sticky, her head pounded as if someone was shooting fireworks inside it. Somehow she sat up and gripped something so that she wouldn't fall again.
It was a medstat's arm, cold, immobile, and unblinking.
Meliora vomited, though not much came out, and then she felt even thirstier than before. The machine stayed silent. It wouldn't—couldn't—help.
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