Ten Days

by Olivia Mayfield

  I couldn’t do that now, not when I was just discovering them for the first time.

  Turning my attention back to his question, I said, “Yup. I’m ready. I even warmed up.” I gave him a smug grin. “I’m looking forward to showing you my backside.”

  He raised one eyebrow, closing the door behind him. He was so close to me now that I could sense his nearness, even without seeing him well. There was a warm heat pouring off his body, the musky scent of his skin filling my nostrils. My pulse kicked up a notch. It made me uncomfortable.

  It made me want to press closer.

  Then a hot flush bloomed across my cheeks when I realized what I’d just said. “No, wait…I meant—”

  “I know what you meant.” His voice was low, his head leaning ever closer to mine.

  That urge came over me again, the strange instinct to touch him. We’d never crossed that line, as that way led to trouble, but recently I’d started thinking about it. More and more. And with him this near, I could imagine reaching my fingers over and brushing against his flesh. What would he feel like?

  Would he like it?

  Would I?

  “Hate to tell you this, Cally, but you’ll be the one left behind.” He paused. “Ready, go!” With that, Marshal darted down the hallway, quickly disappearing into the black.

  “Not fair,” I whispered, taking off behind him and shaking away my wayward thoughts. Focus.

  Our feet thudded in near-perfect rhythm as I caught up. He softly panted, a syncopated beat that accentuated our steady movement.

  The first time he and I had tried this challenge, we’d only made it a short distance before stopping and pressing our backs against the walls, gasping for air for what seemed like forever. But every night, we’d pushed ourselves to go a little bit farther. Then a little bit more. Last week, we’d actually made it the entire way to our near-nightly destination, Kuno’s pod, without stopping at all.

  My muscles rippled, burned with each stretch of my legs. I pushed them to go, to edge me just past Marshal. I darted a quick left, right then forced myself to press forward, ever forward to the goal. We knew the path in the dark by heart, measuring the distance with our footsteps, the soft exhale of each breath.

  Near. Far. Words that six months ago had been meaningless to me now shocked me with their relevancy as I turned the last corner to Kuno’s hallway. His oft-repeated words echoed in my head—“Man is the measure.” A skill long ago lost to our people. A so-called “improvement” to our culture. After all, with everything in arm’s reach thanks to the Machine, why bother learning what was far or near?

  Yet all I could think, as I heard Marshal fast on my heels, was how proud I was to grow strong. To take a chance, even in this small way.

  Ignoring the flash of pain in my side, I reached Kuno’s door and slapped my hand on the wall beside it. “I won,” I said, panting, smiling. Sweat streamed in small rivulets down my back, glossing my skin. The sensation had been incredibly uncomfortable at first but I’d grown used to it. In fact, I’d come to look forward to it—just a small part of the mechanics of my own physique, the machinery of the human body.

  Marshal grinned. I could barely see him from the light slitting out of the bottom of the door, but I couldn’t mistake the twinkle in his eyes. “Impressive. You learn fast.”

  I shrugged. “I had a great teacher.”

  The door opened, and Kuno pressed his hands to his hips, looking down on us. With silver-streaked hair slicked back, he was the very image of austerity. If only people knew the truth. “Are you two going to stand outside talking all night?”

  Marshal shook his head with a wry grin and, swiping a forearm across his brow, followed Kuno inside, with me right behind.

  The pod was, of course, like every other, with a couple of minor differences in decor. Marshal had started talking with Kuno last year after becoming interested in the older man’s unusual, yet compelling lectures and ideas about space and stars and the ways the ancients used to travel to distant planets, and he and I had quickly realized there was something different about Kuno.

  First, Kuno preferred meeting face-to-face to using the Machine for communication, an idea that had taken us a while to get used to. Now, Marshal and I looked forward to these moments. No longer did I solely rely upon the optic plate’s representations, which filtered out emotion and facial nuances to show us the “truth” of a person’s looks. I could see the squint in Kuno’s eyes as he explained a complicated theory, the way Marshal nibbled on his lip when deep in thought. And they could see me too.

  There was something compelling about being so vulnerable, so raw.

  Second, he had a small sketch pinned to the wall behind his chair—it was a pattern of dots.

  When Marshal had asked me to come with him that first time, that was the only question I’d dared to ask—what the dots meant. Kuno had explained that many years ago, he’d been on an air-ship and looked up at the stars. He’d realized there was a cluster that, to him, looked like the shape of a man. He had been unable to get the idea of star shapes out of his mind, so he’d drawn it.

  Once I’d seen it, I’d understood what he meant. I’d been in an air-ship once since then and had tried to stare up into the night sky, hoping to find Kuno’s stars. But I hadn’t seen them.

  His mother had been angry when he’d told her his star idea. I remembered being saddened by that because I, too, had experienced the pain of feeling like I wasn’t living up to my responsibilities. Hanna’s frustration with me was the same. Kuno’s isolation, his unusual perspectives, made me connect easier with him.

  “I need two more chairs,” Kuno suddenly said, his tone sharp as he settled into his seat.

  Two chairs came out of the walls, forming a circle in the middle of the room. Marshal and I sat down. I drew in slower breaths to help my heart rate drop back to normal quicker. The tangy scent of our sweat permeated the small pod.

  “I’m afraid I’m not going to be a good host tonight,” Kuno continued with a sigh. “I would have asked you to stay away, but I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, folding my legs up into the chair. Another thing I’d discovered—it was fun to see how I could stretch my limbs now that I was increasing my range of motion. This position was my favorite thus far. And I admit, it made me smile to see Marshal and Kuno shake their heads at me.

  Kuno pinched his lips together, and I realized this wasn’t just some random bad day. There was actually something bothering him. “What have you both heard about the music problem?”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “The problem is with the food, not music. Or was your food okay?”

  Marshal leaned forward a bit. “My fruit was rotten. I tried a bite and had to spit it out—it was sour and mushy.”

  “It’s not only the food.” Kuno’s eyes darkened. He got up from his seat and paced the room. “This is just the beginning.”

  My stomach pinched at his words. There was something bad he was hinting at here. I stared at him, willing him to say more but fearing what I was going to hear.

  “Have you listened to music recently?” Kuno looked at Marshal. “It’s…off. There’s a strange whining noise threading along the top notes. The music lecturers have been complaining about it nonstop.”

  Marshal’s brow furrowed. “I may have heard something about it. But I hear so much grumbling lately that I don’t always pay attention.”

  I wrapped my arms around my chest. “What are you saying, Kuno?”

  He stopped in his tracks. “I’m…getting a bad feeling.”

  “What about?” I pressed.

  “I don’t want to talk more until I’m sure I know what’s going on.”

  “Why are you keeping us in the dark?” Marshal asked with a huff. He stood up too, eye to eye with Kuno. Daring him to—speak? To push him away? I wasn’t sure, but I read the frustration in the tense lines of his body. “Your number-one rule so far has been openness. That whateve
r we say here is sacred and unjudged. But you’re breaking that by withdrawing.”

  “And for good reason,” Kuno said, backing away. He turned his back to us. “There’s so much you two don’t know. That most people don’t know, actually. But the more I tell you, the more I put you in danger. I won’t do that.”

  I stared down at the ground, the smooth surface ready to ripple up in an instant, should I accidentally drop something. When I was young, I’d been fascinated with that and would let items slip from my fingers, only to watch the floor press them back up to my hands. The ultimate in convenience—technology at its finest. No wonder it was still taking me so long to adjust to being independent.

  “We’re already pushing the boundaries,” I said, pouring all the conviction I could into my voice. “Walking and running and letting ourselves express all these emotions we can’t talk about anywhere else.” My mother would be horrified beyond belief if she or the Committee knew what we were doing; I’d already suffered from enough “well-meaning” lectures from her over my every imperfection. “We all take risks with this. But we do it because we know there’s more to living than just striving for the perfect society. That maybe, just maybe, the ancients weren’t so wrong.”

  Suddenly I thought of my little half brother, who was barely seven. Living in the public nursery, he was so similar to me and yet filled with his own unique potential. Had he eaten the spoiled food or, like me, let his “barbarian” instinct dictate his actions and shoved it away?

  “I was like you when I was younger,” Kuno suddenly said. There was a wistful tenor in his voice. “I believed in the power of ideas. I strived to be a good member of society and to promote the good of the Machine, yet I also felt this pull to be…different. I dared to take risks, one of which almost resulted in my Homelessness.”

  I blinked. Kuno had never mentioned that before.

  “What did you do?” Marshal asked quietly.

  Kuno turned around, locking eyes with him then me. “I went somewhere I wasn’t supposed to. And I’m lucky I got a second chance. But things are stricter than they used to be, and you two need to be very careful. Especially you, Cally,” he said to me, his brows furrowing as he scrutinized me. “Being the offspring of the one of the Committee members means you’re always expected to behave, to exemplify behaviors of the perfect citizen. A task I don’t envy of you.” He walked to the door and opened it. “I’m tired. I’m going to rest. All praise the Machine.”

  Marshal and I left, not speaking a word the whole way back. Our walk was slow, our footsteps almost muted. When we reached his door, I gave him a half smile and a nod goodnight.

  In my pod I didn’t even look at my screen. Nothing in me could summon the interest to talk to anyone right now. I turned on isolation, blocking everything out, then called for the bed and turned off the lights. With blind eyes I stared into the darkness, fighting back the apprehension shaking my hands. I pressed them to my stomach and breathed slowly, willing myself to sleep.

  But the echo of Kuno’s parting words, his praise of the Machine laced with a bitterness I’d never heard before, kept me awake long into the night.

  Chapter 3

  “Every man and woman can contribute to the growth and continuation of our society. If you wish to assist in population control, via maternity/paternity or Euthanasia, please contact the Population Committee by pressing the blue button four times.” ~ The Book of the Machine

  The next morning, I woke up and turned on the lights, flooding the brown walls of my pod with an ambient, warm glow. My eyes felt gritty; between traitorous thoughts about Marshal, worries about Kuno and catching (hopefully) imaginary whiffs of soured food, it had taken a long time to fall asleep.

  When I stood, the bed retracted into the wall. I glanced over at my optic screen, knowing I needed to turn off the isolation switch. There were probably dozens of messages waiting to flood my screen. Yet I stood there, pushing back a swell of irritation, unwilling for just a moment to replug back in to the Machine.

  My reluctance to connect with the colony had grown greater every day. Why was I pulling away from others, when deep down I knew my biggest craving was connection?

  Maybe because this didn’t feel like connection to me. It felt like little more than a push of information, a clamor of the same ideas repeated over and over again. But each in-person moment with Marshal, hearing his unfiltered breaths and chortling laughs, being close enough to see the flecks of gray in his eyes, had become more addictive than anything else. Each moment of sharing a flash of inventiveness with Kuno, watching the various nuanced expressions on his face as he chewed over ideas, had become inspiring.

  The optic screens were a pale imitation of reality.

  I turned off isolation. As predicted, there were a bunch of messages, one from Tessa asking for me to call her when I woke up. A sudden smile burst onto my face—I hadn’t talked to her in a while, since she’d been busy with lectures.

  I called her back. “Tessa!” I said when her image popped up on the screen.

  My friend’s rich brown skin and dark eyes appeared on my screen, serene. Emotionless. “Hi, Cally. I hear you’ve been busy.”

  “Not as busy as you,” I retorted. “I hear you’re going to be a parent in the near future. That’s amazing.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been waiting for what feels like forever. But since I just turned twenty last week, my application was approved.” Her voice went quiet for a moment.

  “Hey, the fact that you got accepted is amazing. That’s no small feat anymore.” A flash of sadness tweaked my heart as I thought about Kuno. The poor man had tried years ago to be permitted to have children. But he’d been denied time and again. Perhaps being different from others, not going with the status quo, had hurt him in this way.

  It made me wonder sometimes if that was why he was so interested in hanging out with Marshal and me. Not only because we were different, but because we fulfilled that need in him somehow.

  “So, who do you think you’ll be paired with?” I continued.

  “Huh? It really doesn’t matter to me,” she said with a shrug, her voice oddly flat. “What matters is that I help create a child who forwards our society’s progress.”

  I paused. When she and I had been younger, we used to talk about what we would be like as parents. Though we understood even then the lack of involvement all biological parents had in childrearing, we’d imagined at times birthing our children together, teaching them.

  Now, Tessa sounded more like an excerpt from The Book of the Machine than a real person. The change surprised me.

  “You’re not curious at all? Why wouldn’t you want to know?” I pressed. To be honest, this part of the process still baffled me. I wasn’t sure how it worked—how men and women created a child. I knew there was some sort of genetic mixture required. But beyond that it was a mystery, the specifics known only to our Population Committee members and those who had undergone the process. Perhaps there was a lecture available on the topic.

  “Why would I want to know? I know the Committee will handle it for me, and it hardly matters who it’s with so long as he’s approved.” She paused. “Anyway, have you heard any new ideas lately?”

  I shoved aside my confusion and frustration about her quick subject change and forced a smile into my voice. Then I told her about Marshal’s overheard idea about domestic animals.

  “That’s weird,” she said. An edge of disgust rang through her tone. “Who would want to have animals in their pod?”

  “Why is that weird? It’s the way things used to be. Not everything from the past is bad.” The words spilled out before I could stop them.

  I could tell my assertion gave Tessa pause too. She wasn’t used to me speaking out against her thoughts, being so vocal. Frankly, I wasn’t sure what had come over me either. I just knew I was finding it harder to keep quiet, to swallow everything I was being told just because that was the way it was “supposed” to be.

  I wasn’t supposed
to crave unique or possibly dangerous ideas, crave another person’s touch. Or have this forbidden ache for how things were well before I was even born. And yet, I couldn’t seem to turn off my feelings as easily as everyone else did.

  “Um, I’ve heard the domestic animals weren’t frightening beasts,” I continued, unable to stop the compulsive need to justify myself. “They used to be sweet and kind. And mankind enjoyed their companionship.”

  “I’m sure they did.” Her voice was a little cool, a contrast to the neutral image on the screen. “But it’s a good thing we’ve evolved past that. From what I understand, all those domestic animals also came with their downsides, like diseases and such.”

  “I guess that’s true,” I conceded then paused. “Why do you want to have a child?” I blurted out, surprised by the question flying out of my mouth.

  Tessa was silent for several long moments. “Because it’s one way for me to matter,” she finally admitted. “Because I can make a difference to our civilization this way. I can be important. I look at people like our nursery instructors and your mother, people who work hard to keep our society growing and thriving. I just want to be like that too.”

  My heart swelled, chipping away at my earlier irritation. “You matter to me,” I whispered.

  “What?”

  For some reason, I had a hard time repeating my impromptu sentiment. “You matter to our society,” I said, though I was frustrated with myself for not being honest.

  Something was changing in our dynamic. Maybe Tessa had grown different and I’d never noticed it before. She sounded overly eager to please, willing to be one more cog in the Machine.

  Or maybe the change was in me. Maybe my unwillingness, my increasing dissatisfaction with the status quo had made me different than her.

  A memory rushed into my mind of the two of us, side by side, learning our lessons in the public nursery. Your mind is your greatest gift, a nursery instructor would drill over and over. Our society’s future rests on the shoulders of those who strive for sophistication.