Pills and Starships

by Lydia Millet

  They could still notice, Keahi’d warned Sam, even though the brown of our eyes made the size of the black pupils harder to notice. So it was key that we didn’t get too close. We should still meet their eyes if any of them established eye contact, Keahi had instructed, because if we looked away that would be suspicious too.

  So the rule was, stay at least a couple of feet away at all times—three or more feet was best.

  We practiced it with each other in Sam’s room, before we went to bed. We figured out how far three feet was and practiced walking up to each other and talking normally, not being self-conscious about hiding our eyes. It was surprisingly hard not to think about them once we knew that both looking directly at someone and evading some­one’s gaze could put us in danger. We practiced all we could before I went back to my own room.

  Also, Keahi had said, the pills we were going to be on would give us more energy than the corp pharms would have, so we would have to be really careful not to act too amped.

  Well, then we went to sleep, and when we got up this morning we took the drugs. I have to say, I’m on them now. And energy is almost an understatement. This must be what it’s like to be crazy.

  I want to go and keep going.

  Keahi said to funnel the physical feelings into doing normal things, like writing in this journal, for me, or for Sam reading and music-listening. I’m trying, but it’s hard. I would prefer to jump up and down and run in circles.

  Meanwhile, my parents are—just as the corp brochures promised—what is called pharmahappy. They still know who we are, but they don’t seem to know much about the world anymore. It’s like the world has reverted, for them, into what it used to be—or maybe they’re just living in a different time zone today, like they’re back in the middle of the last c., when things could still pass for normal. Here’s an example:

  The corp sent breakfast to the suite, so we could dine in privacy. Happiness Day isn’t a big day for public occasions, really; they serve all the meals in-room, and most people eat them on their balconies. So a cafeteria worker or waitron or something—wearing the usual beige robe but also a kind of sanitation cap over her hair—showed up with some trays on a cart shortly after we’d dressed, and she rolled it in.

  “Bless Happiness,” she said.

  That’s supposed to be the greeting on Day Five.

  “Bless it,” answered my dad, who was doing goofy-looking stretches on the balcony.

  Then she left.

  “Apples!” chirped my mom, smiling gleefully. “Apples!”

  There was a basket in the middle of the cart, you see, with fresh fruit in it beneath a beige napkin.

  But when my mother said “Apples!” the napkin was still on—it hadn’t been pulled back yet to even show what lay underneath.

  And the thing is, apples haven’t been around for decades now, since way before I was born. I’ve browsed them because I look for beautiful objects for collecting—sometimes I have to collect pictures if I don’t find things I can hold—and there’s an antique painting I love with apples in it. But most kids wouldn’t know an apple if it kicked them in the face. The weather conditions that apples need to grow apparently don’t happen anymore. The superrich can still grow them indoors, I think, but they’re a delicacy you never see unless you’re so rich you don’t even notice the vast carbon taxes that are charged for eating food that’s not on the A list.

  Apples were famous fruits once though, in lots of old stories and pictures; an image of one was even on my first interface—some kind of corp logo that’s been phased out since then.

  “Apples!” said my dad joyfully, doing his usual echo thing.

  Sam raised the napkin off the fruit basket and what we saw was tropical fruit, of course—still a major delicacy—a couple of fresh mangoes like the ones we’d tasted in camp and a sliced pineapple.

  “No apples, Mom,” said Sam. “Sorry.”

  “An apple a day keeps the doctor away!” she replied brightly. “These look delicious.” And she picked up a mango and bit into it without even peeling the skin off.

  “Uh …” started Sam.

  “This,” said my mother, with yellow mango juice dripping down her chin, “is far and away the best apple I’ve ever had in my life.”

  Empty of pharms, I would have thought the sight of that dripping chin was slightly gruesome. As it was, I felt like laughing.

  “Let me try,” said my dad, and she handed it to him.

  “Try it, Bobby,” she urged.

  “Mmm,” said my father, chewing. “Far and away.”

  “Isn’t that peel kind of bitter?” asked Sam. “And tough? Here, at least let me peel it for you.”

  Sam, I could tell, was trying harder than usual to be helpful—probably to expend some of his extra energy on normal things, per our instructions.

  “Oh no, the peel is good for you,” said my mother. “With vitamins!”

  Apparently it didn’t occur to her that “good for you” didn’t really apply anymore, since she was headed straight for Game Over.

  Do not pass go. Do not bother to eat healthy.

  Sam looked at me. I shrugged.

  “Whatever works,” I said. “You know, though, where I come from we call those mangoes. Usually.”

  “Delicious,” moaned my mother. My father was chewing and nodding.

  I guess they didn’t really care what it was. Still, if it was a fantasy they were creating on purpose, the peel-eating was going a bit too far.

  Sam and I were ready to bounce off the walls and not too hungry, so once they were done eating their “apples”—which took them forever, chewing that tough mango peel—and some pancakes with syrup, we urged them to come on a walk with us. Accepted walks for Happiness Day are limited to the lavender areas, and there aren’t that many of them outdoors, but we really needed to get out of the suite—to get away from the cameras, partly, and just to have something to do. So we persuaded them to come with us to a Japanese garden the hotel sets aside for contracts on Happiness Day.

  Sam wanted to take the stairs down ten flights, running (our suite is on the fifth floor). I was like, Uh, no, and gave him a warning look.

  We got in the elevator.

  “Beautiful,” said my mother, as the doors closed. She reached out and touched a handrail thing.

  “Er, the elevator?” asked Sam.

  “Look at this,” said my mother. “So smooth!” She was literally caressing the metal handrail. “A smoothness like soap, like satin or honey. How do they get it that way?”

  “Machined,” answered my father, with a sense of awe in his voice, and reached out to touch it too.

  “Um, it’s a handrail, idiots,” said Sam, all punitive.

  “Or maybe it’s an apple,” I muttered.

  There were mirrors in the elevator, like there almost always are, and that was where my parents focused next.

  “You look old,” said my mother to my father.

  “You too,” he replied, but they were both smiling like this wasn’t a negative at all.

  “How old are you?” asked my mother, staring at his reflection. She reached out and kind of poked his image in the mirror—maybe the lines at the corners of his eyes, or something.

  “I’m young,” said my father, mildly surprised. “I look older, though.”

  “How old am I?” asked my mother.

  “You’re eighty-five,” said Sam. “And Dad is ninety-three.”

  They turned around and stared at him. And then burst out laughing.

  Sam and I just watched them in amazement. They were practically doubled over, they were cracking up so hard. When they wound down, the elevator doors were already opening, and they stepped out shaking their heads and wiping tears from their cheeks.

  “Sara, darlin’,” said my dad affectionately, “you don’t look a day over forty.” Then he turned to Sam and me. “You jokers.”

  “Don’t pay any attention, they’re just babies,” said my mom, and then her face c
hanged for a second like some­thing tragic washed over it. Something deeply sad and utterly confused.

  But that passed in a flash and her smile came back.

  “Ninety-three,” said my father, and shook his head as we headed out through the lobby. “That’s classic.”

  And then we were on a gravel path and consulting our map of the resort. With Sam in the lead, we headed to the Japanese garden. It was a very pretty place, with narrow waterways all around in meandering curves and small ornamental bridges over them. There were tall clumps of reeds and hedges manicured into neat shapes. Big birds stalked here and there, big pinkish birds with long beaks and skinny legs, like storks or flamingos or something.

  I saw other families, some having picnics on blankets, some wandering and looking. One old person was using a rake to make orderly scratches in an artistic-looking bed of pebbles.

  “Fish,” said my dad, and pointed down at one of the small canals.

  “Do we have a fish?” asked my mother in a puzzled voice, turning to me.

  “Actually, once we did,” I said faintly.

  Sure enough, there were big fancy goldfish swimming lazily around down there, spots of white and black on their round bodies. I gazed at them for a while, my mind racing from the pharma. I let it race and stared at the fish. I was thinking, Away, away, away. Get us away from here.

  I imagined unreal things—magic carpets, giant birds you could sit on that flew you across the sky. I imagined caves and genies and then remembered the tunnels in the black lava. I thought of the future, of me and Sam living in the caldera with turtles and moss-green clothing and probably no mood softeners, not a single one. I wondered if I would have any face access in the camp, if we made it there, and if not how I would live my whole life without it. I’d never been without a face. I felt a sense of longing for my unit at home, which I might never see again.

  If I didn’t have face I’d have no friends, either—to them it would seem like I’d left them without a word, and when that happened you tended to figure the person had died of a fast-migrating bug.

  I wondered how much I would miss the complexes and cities, the largeness of the continent I was born on, where the land seemed to go on forever. I thought of the Hawaiian Islands and the sea level rising around them, and whether we would ever be safe.

  “A pagoda!” said my mother, and pointed across at a dark-red gazebo thing with curves on the tips of the roof.

  “It must be heaven,” said my father.

  “The gardens of Kyoto,” breathed my mother.

  “Or the hanging gardens of Babylon,” said my father. “One of the seven great wonders …”

  “… of the ancient world,” finished my mother.

  “Really ancient,” said Sam. “I’ve never even heard of that. What are you talking about?”

  “Wind chimes!” enthused my mother, ignoring him.

  Sure enough, in one shady area there were a whole lot of wind chimes hanging from the trees, making tinkly sounds as they moved in the breeze. My mom went over there and stood among them, looking up and all around her with wide eyes like a wonder-struck child.

  “Bobby! It’s Babylon! Have we been to this place before, Bobby?”

  “Sara,” said my father, and went to stand beside her, taking her hand as she leaned her head onto his shoulder, “we’ve always been here, darling. We never left. We’ve always lived in Babylon.”

  We spent a long time in the garden, since my parents were zoned and Sam and I were in no hurry either. We wandered around and looked at things, and tried not to walk too fast or talk too fast either, because Keahi had warned us about that. For a long time we followed the birds around, which were skittish and definitely not robots, and I had to hold Sam back from chasing one, because they couldn’t fly—their wings must have been clipped—and when we got too close they did this hilarious awkward run that made us laugh.

  But when we finally started to make our way out of the garden and back toward the building my parents were both dreamy and not saying much anymore, just strolling and gazing with their giant-pupiled eyes.

  “Happiness is at sunset, right?” I asked Sam.

  “Why yes, it is,” he said, and gave me a look like maybe I was going to say something I shouldn’t. Because the Japanese garden, as he had warned me before, was definitely not a “secure location,” like Keahi had put it. “Bless Happiness.”

  “Yeah, totally bless it,” I said.

  “It’s a really nice day for a Bountiful Passing,” said Sam, laying it on pretty thick.

  “I’m glad you’ve finally come around, baby brother,” I said, in case a listening device happened to pick us up right then.

  “I had to. I mean, just look at them.”

  We did.

  Mom and Dad were up ahead near the Shinto Gate, as the label proclaimed it, that led out of the garden. They were just standing there and kind of, well—making out.

  We shot each other these sideways glances, like, are we allowed to say grotesque?

  “Wow, huh,” I said.

  “That’s really blessed,” said Sam. “Isn’t it?”

  “For sure,” I said, though actually it almost made me squirm.

  Maybe the corp dope makes it okay to watch your elderly parents suck lips together in public, but I’ll tell you this: ours did not.

  But then we looked at them necking and looked at each other and for some reason, just then, it set us off. We had all that pent-up energy still, and the hysteria spilled out and we were laughing and laughing. We were doubled over, out of control.

  And sure enough, as we started to wind down and straighten up from that laughing, there came a corp worker, striding along the path toward us in her beige robe. She wasn’t one we’d seen before—maybe she was in charge of the garden or something—but she had a severe hatchet face going on and her lips were tight and wrinkled.

  “Is everything all right under here?” she asked in a slightly threatening way.

  “Oh yes, sorry—my sister told this old joke,” said Sam, and he was kind of waving his hand around, maybe to distract from his small pupils.

  “Old joke,” I agreed. “Sorry.”

  “This is a place of tranquilling,” she said. “Now, children, please choose a calmer way of being.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Sam. “Yes. Yes, we will.”

  “We’re over it,” I said, and we were, we were scared straight, basically. Or as straight as we could be.

  But when the woman turned and left—frightening us a bit with a quizzical expression that suggested she was making a note of our behavior and would be keeping a close eye on us—we glanced over at our parents to see if they had noticed how busted we were. And they were still making out.

  I swear, we almost started laughing again. But we managed to keep our cool, and just walked toward them. As we approached, my mom got distracted by something and stopped the kissing deal, fortunately. She pointed up at the sky.

  “Look, honey, look! The trumpeter swans have returned!”

  My father shaded his eyes and looked where she was pointing, and then so did we.

  I saw nothing up there except the bright, bright sun.

  For sheer awkwardness and dread, there’s not much that compares with the part of Happiness Day leading up to the Glorious/Easeful/Bountiful Passing.

  Because our pharms didn’t have the passivity of the corp stuff built into them, we weren’t all sleepy high like the other survivors must have been—at least the ones I saw wandering and grinning among the fat fish. So we were on a pharmahigh, but we were also restless and there was a pretty major element of anxiety behind the exhilaration.

  We had a plan, though. And I think that was what kept us from going more crazy.

  After lunch was the most painful time, because that’s when we had to all sit around together on the balcony and do the Letter Reading.

  The Letter Reading is what it sounds like, the part of Final Week when you have to exchange letters. We’d writ
ten the letters, as the corp instructed, before we left home, and now we had to pass them out and read them all together. There were letters from Sam and me to each of our parents, and letters from them to each of us.

  The letters had a public section and a private one. The public sections were meant to be read aloud, and the private sections were for reading to ourselves—and keeping secret, if we wanted.

  They’re also supposed to be keepsakes. So after we wrote them, we sent them to Jean and she had them printed on fancy papyrus and they had graphics on them too, pictures of us and stuff. We were told to stay positive in the letters, since they were for Happiness Day and not for venting.

  Our own letters to Mom and Dad get willed to us, for us to look at later if we want to pull them out and reminisce. That’s the idea, anyway. Some people frame the letters and put them up on their walls. I’ve seen them at survivors’ condos.

  So we sat out on the balcony, with its view of the cliffwalk and the ocean, and with drinks on small tables at our elbows and flowers the suite cleaners had set up there. My parents read the letters to them first, as the plan recommended. My dad picked mine to start with, unrolling it so the white tassels hung and swayed in the wind.

  “Dear Dad,” he began, and cleared his throat. “I try to imagine what it must be like to be you and see the world change as much as you’ve seen it. I try to imagine being anyone who lived most of their life before the tipping point. I can’t. But because of you I keep trying. All my life you’ve taught me to be interested in what came before, and so I try to browse about history. I try to imagine not being me, being an olden person, Before. And because of you I know that it still matters, even now, what’s beautiful. And what isn’t. That beauty will always matter. And I love knowing that. You’ve taught me the world matters, the world and everything that has ever lived in it. Because there’s always been beauty. And always will.”

  He looked up from the papyrus then, which trembled a little in his hands.

  “Lovely, Nattie,” he said.

  “Lovely,” said my mother.

  “Dig it,” nodded Sam.

  “Part of me is sorry for Mom and you,” he went on. “Because life is so hard with everything you know and remember. But part of me is jealous too. Because of that same thing. Because I can never know or see what you have seen …”