Pills and Starships

by Lydia Millet

  Sam eyeballed me a little, fear in the whites of his eyes, and a split-second later he was gagging, he was hunching forward and making motions of being sick.

  “I’ll get him to the toilet,” I rushed, and I got up, and I grabbed him by the hand and pulled. LaTessa stood up too, but I pushed him past her and out the door, we were basically running, and it was a blur after that. I got him to the door of the waste room, and then we were inside and I took the vial out of my robe pocket and shoved the pills into his mouth, with him half-helping and half-flailing, and then he was swallowing and it looked like he really was gagging, but I didn’t have time to watch. I threw the vial into a composting toilet and then even—this is a gross part—shoved it down under the top layer of straw, which thankfully wasn’t too shitty, and turned around just in time to see Sam leaning over the sink, where he must have washed down the pills with some Reclaimed Sewage Grade A.

  And then the door was flung open. I mean this whole thing took under sixty seconds.

  I couldn’t wash my hands because that would tip them off, so I stood there with the faint pungency of compost on my fingertips, hoping no one else could smell it coming from me. And Sam stood over the sink, face streaming with sweat and bright red, and it did look like he might have just thrown up.

  But he had swallowed the pills.

  And water was washing down the sink. So for all they knew, he had been sick.

  I was afraid. Of the service employee standing in front of me—not Rory but his friend from before, another man-mountain with a name tag that read, Olaf.

  “I’m sorry,” I said shakily. “I know it’s totally disruptive. But he just—he had to throw up. Maybe a reaction to his pharms?”

  Olaf jerked his head at me, to say, Get out. (It was a men’s waste room, by the way.) He didn’t bother to make nice. “Wait in the hall,” he said. “Don’t leave.”

  So he stayed in the waste room with Sam, and I went out. As I was standing in the hall, following orders and waiting for them, I noticed a door cracked open—it must have been the door to a room just off the healing room, I think, because the healing room door was only a few feet further along the hall. It was open a couple of inches, like it hadn’t quite connected and clicked closed when someone quickly went in. I don’t know whether it was just boredom and restlessness or whether I was purposeful, but some­thing made me sneak closer until I was near enough to detect the voices leaking out of it.

  And then I heard a man’s voice say, not loudly but forcefully all the same, with a threatening tone: “That shit can’t happen. That’s major demerits. I bet you forfeit the whole week’s bonus.”

  And then a woman’s voice: “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. My whole bonus? It could be nothing. And it went down in two seconds flat. What the fuck was I supposed to do? You fucking tell me, Rory.”

  I knew that voice even without the phony serene vibe and careful language technology. And it belonged to LaT.

  Sam and Olaf came out after a minute and I led Sam up to the suite, with Olaf lumbering at our heels. When we got up there he was mumbling about how he was afraid he was going to be sick again. Actually he was just falling asleep, I could tell, and I was worried about all those pills and what they might do to him. I wasn’t quite as certain as he was that he wouldn’t OD.

  But I was also relieved he wasn’t saying anything shocking. And that I’d been able to keep my promise. It had been a close call.

  Olaf didn’t let me stay with Sam though, I had to go back to the session and he escorted me the whole way. When I went in, there was LaTessa, completely returned to her serene self. Like nothing had happened. My parents were holding hands with her, and all three of them had closed eyes and were trancelike.

  I was feeling shaken because I guess in some way I’d trusted that LaTessa was who she pretended to be. In some way I wanted her to be a real VR; if she was going to say that jargon I’d wanted her to mean it. I didn’t want her to be someone who was flat-out pretending. And now I knew she was. She was just like the other thugs, nothing but a regular service employee, and all her language technology was a veneer. She wasn’t a shrink, she was a con man.

  On one level I’d always thought she was fake, sure, partly because of Sam’s cynicism and partly because her way of talking had too many rules for me. But still I must have hoped she wasn’t. I must have hoped she did have secrets, somewhere inside those words ending with -ing. Good secrets, like a godbelief. And now that hope was dashed.

  Who knew what else was fake? This whole thing could be a house of cards. Underneath all the pretty surfaces, it might all be people swearing like LaTessa, people trying to pull something.

  In fact now it seemed to me like it almost had to be that way, and I’d always been a sheep, just like Sam said. A sheep and a brainwash.

  I bit down so hard on my teeth that they hurt. I didn’t want to be a sheep.

  I waited politely till LaT. and my parents opened their eyes again and sat down at my place.

  “Illness is part of being,” said LaT. consolingly. “Sam will be being fine later. For now, Nat, let us continue the loving expressing.”

  All I could think of was the tone of her normally silvery voice, saying, My whole bonus? What the fuck was I supposed to do?

  But I tried on a weak smile and pushed myself back into a therapy frame of mind.

  When my parents and I got back to the suite Sam was still fast asleep. My parents just stuck their heads in his door quickly and then went out onto the balcony; I took a closer look myself, being worried, but his breathing seemed normal so I told myself he was okay. For the moment, at least.

  We had a group cliffwalk scheduled next, which was supposed to end with a guided Goodbye Ceremony. I wasn’t sure what to do about Sam.

  But as it turned out I didn’t get to decide.

  Because who should show up while I was writing in my journal but Olaf and Rory. And behind them was Keahi. And one other young Hawaiian guy in a robe without a name tag.

  At first I was alarmed, I thought Keahi had been found out, maybe. Then he smiled at me, and it warmed me up. It was that reassuring.

  “We’ve brought two supervisors,” said Rory to Mom and Dad. “They have health training and they’re going to watch your little guy for you, until he’s ready to go back on-plan. You can rely on them absolutely, they’ve been thoroughly vetted and are 100 percent trustworthy. Sound good?”

  He was all fake cheer and business as usual.

  Mom and Dad nodded gratefully, like the corp was providing its usual top-notch service.

  “What we suggest is you three go on your cliffwalk, and then, if he’s still not up to snuff, Sam may have to miss the Goodbye Ceremony. Of course, if he feels better by then, we’ll bring him down to join you. We think he’ll feel better. We think it’ll work out fine.”

  “Wonderful,” said my mother.

  “Perfect,” said my dad.

  And then the man-mountains went out the door and it was just Keahi and his colleague.

  I couldn’t ask Keahi anything or tell him what had happened because I had no idea if the other Hawaiian dude was loyal to the camp people or the corp. But I felt way safer with Keahi staying there than I would have with Olaf or Rory.

  So we got out our parasols and water bottles and the small bag of items they’d told us to bring—some keepsakes and little tokens—and looked at our map to the Goodbye Ceremony, which was being held in a garden a ways along the cliffs. And I said goodbye to Keahi as though he was nothing special to me, casual and polite. And we left.

  I felt a tug of regret that Sam couldn’t be with us for this part. And then a tug of resentment, because it was service’s fault, it was all their fault and if this turned out to be real, all of it—really my parents’ Final Week—then the corp would have ruined it for Sam. And he would have missed his only chance to say goodbye properly.

  Sure it was partly his responsibility, and I got that, but they didn’t have to be so brutal with hi
m.

  Some of the other contracts were also out walking—we had the same destination after all—so it wasn’t the solitary, windblown experience it could be.

  “You are a source of strength, Nattie,” my mother said suddenly, as we walked, and reached out to squeeze my hand.

  “A source of strength,” agreed my father.

  “We love you very much,” added my mom.

  “Our love for you will always be,” said my father.

  I felt a pang of something then, because they seemed sincere and not as zoned out as they had been. I also felt nervous, I realized, because I had no idea what would happen. That would make anyone nervous, wouldn’t it? I didn’t know what Plan B was, or for that matter Plan A. I didn’t have any feel for how good or bad our chances were. I didn’t even have the information to take a wild guess.

  And it hit me that we could so easily fail, that it was a David and Goliath thing and why had I been acting so confident? Ever since yesterday, the people I’d met and the things I’d seen, I’d actually been going along kind of assuming we could save my parents, and so maybe the goodbyes weren’t necessarily real. But what if they were, because we couldn’t succeed after all? What if service was too polished for us, too big and smooth of a machine?

  The smart money would definitely be on the corp, not a couple of kids and some tent-dwellers with turtle pets. What if this really was my last day of ever knowing my mother and father? And here I was going through it without thinking so, without believing it—almost casually, because I was stupidly confident?

  And here I was, without pharms in my system. As the corps put it, running flat.

  And suddenly I missed those pharms. Badly.

  I thought, I’ll need my pharms if these guys actually die. And if I’m lucky enough to be alive, and not locked up somewhere, I’ll be out in the jungle too. Pill-less in the palm trees. They probably don’t have much pharma in the rebel camp. Not moodpharma, anyway. They probably can’t get it. They have to live completely unmanaged. That’s their whole deal.

  I thought about bringing my Coping Kit with me into the jungle, and wondered how long its small supply of pills would last me, and I realized I was scared.

  Then Xing was at my elbow and she said hello brightly and distracted me. Her parents talked to my parents, and she and I walked a little ahead of the four of them.

  “Where’s Sam?” she asked.

  “He got sick to his stomach,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Maybe it was nerves. Or side effects.”

  “That’s not what I heard,” she said, her voice lower.

  I looked at her, horror-struck. “What do you mean?”

  “I heard you guys are planning on going somewhere,” she murmured. “Just like I am.”

  I almost stopped walking right then, but she put her arm around my shoulders casually and gently pushed me forward.

  “No look of surprise, please,” she said. “Keep your expression normal and lightly smiling. There we are. Good. Quite nicely done.”

  “But why—”

  “There aren’t any cameras now, but in a few feet we’re back onscreen. The next one’s right there on that bench. So watch out, because we’ll soon be surveilled again.”

  “So—did—they found you too?” I stammered. “You’ve—you’ve seen it?”

  Then I was instantly frightened that maybe I’d said too much. What if she was a spy from the corp?

  “I’m familiar with the camp,” she said. “It’s why I’m here. And they didn’t find me. I am them. And I found you.”

  Joining the Goodbye Ceremony was easier for me after that. I had plenty of questions, believe me, but I felt a lot stronger knowing Xing was in on it—that it wasn’t just Sam and me striking out on our own. That somehow, for some reason I didn’t understand, she’d brought us in.

  The ceremony was supposed to be a celebration of our parents’ lives, a kind of funeral before the fact. Because they don’t really do funerals after the fact, the service corps, that’s only for DIYs. No burial or cremation anymore—they passed a law saying burial was a land waste and cremation had too big of a footprint. So what happens to your body after you die is, it gets put in a tank where it’s dissolved by these enzymes. And that breeds a bunch of new enzymes they can use for good purposes, like breaking down compost or cleaning water supplies or fertilizing gardens, depending on what kind of enzyme you decide you want to recycle into. You can pick; it’s a line item on the contracts.

  And instead of funerals after you die, they have these Goodbye Ceremonies beforehand.

  Ours was okay. It really wasn’t that bad.

  It started around sunset, when we’d all finished our walk along the cliffs and had made it into the garden at the clifftop; we sat down in the rows of decorated chairs they’d set out facing the sea. They had a little white ornamental doorway at the front, nearest the cliff, a bit like you might have for a fancy wedding, and there were flowers. There was a VR type who talked about Bountiful Passing and then said antique poetry; there were a couple of musicians who played a keyboard and an old string instrument to accompany him.

  Then as it got darker they gave the survivors little balsa boats for each of their parents, or whoever the contract holder was in their family. A couple of people had aunts or uncles under contract, a brother or sister—it wasn’t parents for everyone. So I had two boats and Xing also had two. They were delicate but not too lightweight to hold things.

  And into the boats we were told to put the small objects we had brought with us from our suites, and before that from home—the objects that symbolized our love for the ones who were leaving. I’d brought things from my collection, because I knew it had to be things I didn’t want to part with or else it wouldn’t mean anything.

  For my mother, I put in a dried leaf off a plant of ours at home, because she really likes plants and this one in particular and she always took care of it and even talked to it, though she also made jokes about people who talk to plants. The leaf was tinged in red, with red along its veins too, and so it reminded me of a person, it was both part of a plant and a kind of copy of a body, so it reminded me of my mother, who’d once been a treehug hippie.

  And I put in an old photo of the two of us, when I was little and she was holding me. I thought she would like that. She’d told me, once when she was really sad and having trouble snapping out of it, that since the world died—as she put it—we were all that lived for her, Sam and I. As well as all she lived for.

  Into my dad’s boat I put a seed, from the bowls of seeds he used to give to the chipmunks in the complex garden, and a drawing I had done for him when I was much younger, five or six I think—a drawing of a bird that I claimed looked like him and labeled, Daddybird. He’d kept it all that time. I thought of putting in something musical, because music was always his first love, but I didn’t have anything.

  Then we held out boats, and the VR guy passed around candles, and we put those in the boats too. He passed out long matches and the parents lit the candles for us—then my mom lit her candle and my dad lit his.

  All the contracts stood up there, on the cliff, in a silent crowd just gazing out at the sea. And the rest of us, the survivors, walked down this steep, winding path from the top of the cliffs to the ground beneath, where the ocean stretched out. Down, down we went, walking slowly, carrying our boats carefully with their candles burning and wax dripping onto the things we’d put into them.

  Finally we got all the way down, and it was fully dark by that time, though there were also a few tiki torches here and there to guide our way. We stood on a kind of dock they’d built, and we knelt down and placed the boats gently onto the water, where there was a channel. Somehow they’d engineered the waterflow right there, in this little protected cove, so that instead of the waves washing the boats back against the dock, it carried them slowly out to sea. We stood there and watched as our boats floated away from us, a fleet of flickering candle glows dispersing
and, in the end, sputtering out.

  A song came to us from the cliffs above, a high, sweet song drifting down on the wind. And also, up above, the contracts were watching the boats sail away—my parents standing side by side and gazing, as they always loved to, over the former great wonder that was the Pacific.

  We waited and waited until the trail of lights disappeared.

  DAY FIVE

  HAPPINESS

  Theme of the Day: Happiness

  It was in our instructions, not from the corp but from the camp: we had to go on illegal pharms.

  I’ll rewind to explain.

  After the Goodbye Ceremony last night, we got back to the room to find Sam wide awake—and of course not feeling sick in the least, since he never had been. My parents went to bed and Keahi and the other guy left. In Sam’s room, where they’d double-checked for bugs and cameras and found none, he told me Keahi had given him a wake-up drug and fed him to get his strength up, and then they’d had a long talk session—he, Keahi, and the other guy, who also was on our side, as it turned out.

  They’d laid out the plan for him, but he wasn’t telling it all to me, only part. And the part was new pharma. Because we had to seem like we were completely with the program, and on Happiness Day it’s impossible to fake being cool with it all, they said, without a mood-stabilizing drug at the very least and to be safe also some uppers. But the drugs from service wouldn’t let us behave the way we needed to.

  Keahi actually gave Sam the drugs we were supposed to take, since the Coping Kit didn’t have the right kind. The Coping Kit drugs would have made us feel okay but they were also opiates and would have doped us up too much. Induced passivity is what Keahi told Sam. So he gave Sam drugs for us that wouldn’t stop us from thinking or moving but would mimic some of the other effects—good cheer and giddiness and loving and all that.

  That was where our dark-brown eyes would come in handy, according to Sam. Because the one danger with the replace­ment pills was, they made your pupils shrink. Whereas the corp pharms made them dilate. And it would be important to keep the corp workers from noticing those small pupils.