by Travis Hill
She’d been about to scav a freshly terminated Guardian when two different blocker crews surprised each other. Melly didn’t go into grisly detail, but one crew barely outlasted the other only to meet their unceremonious end by her gun. That was just before a sextet of Guardians arrived in force to recover the remains of their fallen comrade. But not before she’d stripped the dead one—and the blockers—of anything and everything valuable.
“When are you getting your clock stopped?” Kavi asked me casually, sensing the sudden tension between Melly and I.
“Soon, I guess,” I said to the counter, refusing to look at either of them.
“Good luck,” he said, reaching out a hand to touch my arm on his way by. “Maybe you’ll be my color-sister.”
I looked up to see him give me a mischievous grin before hustling his way into the kitchen.
“Or maybe grow a second vagina,” Melly said from behind me, her breath hot on my neck.
I turned to look at her. “Does that ever happen?” I asked with genuine interest.
She laughed. “No, not that I know of. But it’s a sort of interesting concept, don’t you think?”
“It’s kinda weird,” I said with a giggle before becoming stern and serious. “Is my singular vagina not enough for you?”
“More than enough,” she whispered in a sultry voice while running her fingers across my inner thigh. “Two Drea vaginas though…”
“Gross,” I said, but I was ready to rip her clothes off right there in the small lounge.
“Keep your pants on,” Kavi called from the kitchen as if he’d heard my thoughts spoken out loud.
“When do I get my clock stopped?” I asked after I spent a full minute letting her fingers explore in a larger area.
“Probably not for a while,” she said with a sigh and stepped back from me. I felt as if I’d just been unplugged from a power socket. “It’s a very risky hack.”
“I know, but I’m not Dogan,” I said. I reached for her, pulling her back in to me so she couldn’t look anywhere but into my eyes. “And even if I was, it’s my risk to take. Same as it was his when he took the chance.”
“It’s not that easy. We have to snitch a Guardian’s cypher chip, and they wipe the chip and their neural processors before anything else if you don’t disable it quickly.”
I didn’t want to push her to talk about Dogan, and she deftly avoided the issue anytime his name came up. All I knew about the man was that he had been her lover for many years before they’d secured the tech from a disabled Guardian to stop his timer. And that he’d died a terrible death when the hack triggered the timer’s security program by screwing up his departure clock. She never told me exactly what happened, but based on what I knew about others who’d had their clocks glitch during a hack, it wasn’t hard to imagine.
“So let’s work on that,” I said. I still had nineteen years before my clock ran out, but I was in love with Melly and wanted the security of knowing we’d be together long after I turned forty. Unless I became a victim to the daily violence in The Bower that killed most of us before our clocks ticked over the final time.
“We will, don’t worry,” Melly said, kissing me on the cheek. Her eyes were sadder than I’d ever seen them. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
Kavi interrupted whatever I might have said in reply by bringing out a heaping plate of noodles and a strange blue sauce that tasted better than anything I’d ever eaten during my topside years. He smiled after setting the plate between us on the table, bowed, then returned to his kitchen.
*****
Departure: -16y 01m 19d
It took three years before we bagged a Guardian intact enough to get the parts necessary to stop my clock. Mellisandra and I got into a couple of nasty, knock-down fights about going to Ebbers down in Tech City. I wanted to go the very next day, even though I was sporting a shrapnel wound on my left thigh and Melly had needed five stitches in her right arm.
When she refused to go, I became so incensed that I yanked her by the arm toward the door, tearing her stitches out. Instead of crying out or even just crying, she belted me in the mouth. We screamed at each other for ten minutes after that. Melly finally broke down and told me her fear that Ebbers wouldn’t be able to hack my timer and I’d die either on the spot or within hours as my clock accelerated. I wouldn’t have time to even get back into the upper Bower, let alone past the barrier and to the justice portal.
“I don’t care!” I shouted before breaking down into tears. “I want to get this thing out of me so we can be together without it hanging over our heads!”
“What if you die?” she asked without looking at me.
“I won’t,” I said with the assurance of a girl in her twenties. A hard girl in her twenties, I reminded myself. I had given up the utopian carelessness of those who lived and departed aboveground. That world was foreign to me now, but I was still young enough, still lucky enough to be invincible.
“Let’s say you don’t, but you end up with a crippling side effect or deformity?”
“So what if I do?” I countered hotly. “If I grow a third arm, you won’t love me anymore?”
“Hell no. I could find a use for the hand attached to it.”
I stared at her, confused by her words until I saw the grin on her face.
“What if it was just an arm but no hand?” I asked, slapping away her hand as it tried to grab my waist.
“Whatever,” she breathed.
We didn’t make love so much as fuck as if we were still furious at each other. I was still furious with her. I wanted to be free of the timer. For some reason, an obsession with my timer had begun to invade my mind anytime it wasn’t focused on survival—or climaxing from Melly’s talented, expert attentions. It was now firmly lodged in my thoughts. I struggled to orgasm, which only caused Melly to try harder. I finally pulled her away by her hair and finished myself off. The look on my face when I came must have frightened her as she stared at me for so long I became defensive.
“What?”
“Why can’t you just enjoy the time you have? You only get one shot, and if it fails…”
“It won’t fail,” I said. I kissed her on the mouth, making her whimper when I bit her lip too hard. As if hurting her would swing the odds in my favor.
“Okay, it won’t fail. But why not wait another ten or fifteen years? Who knows what Ebbers and his people might come up with in that time. They might find a better way and perfect it over the years.”
“Using others as test subjects?” I asked, staring into her eyes. She was ruthless when we were in the wild, but Melly didn’t kill or even hurt others for pleasure or to satisfy some dark desire within her.
She looked away. “I’m sorry of it sounds terrible. Or selfish. Ebbers monkeying around with others and giving me a decade or more with you before you have to take that risk is worth it. I love you, Andreada from Haven District.”
“I love you, Mellisandra Who Punches Her Lover,” I growled.
Melly kissed me softly on the bruise that had begun to form. Her fingers trailed down my stomach but I stopped them before they arrived at their destination.
“When can we go?” I asked.
“I can’t talk you out of it, can I?”
“No, so unless you want me to try to make it down to Tech City by myself, you’d be better off humoring me.”
“What if I just smash the processor?”
“You wouldn’t,” I whispered, fear seizing my heart for a moment. I felt hate somewhere inside me as well.
“No, of course not,” Melly said, kissing me on the cheek again before walking to the small shower stall. “I love you. Enough to risk losing you. I’d do anything for you.”
“I love you,” I said, my words lost under the sound of running water and the low rumble and bang of makeshift plumbing lines.
CHAPTER THREE
Departure: -15y 06m 09d
“Hiya, Ebs,” I said, the nervousness I felt coming through my voice
.
“How’s Melly?” the techie asked.
“Good, I guess.”
“She didn’t come with you? That’s not like her, especially since you’re all I’ve heard about for the last four years.” His face was full of concern, even sadness.
“What do you mean?” I asked. I was doing my best to let my nerves keep me from focusing on the rage I felt toward Mellisandra for refusing to come with me to get my clock stopped.
“The poor woman is in love with you,” Ebbers said, shaking his head.
“I know that,” I snapped.
I held off spouting the part about how she must not love me as much as he believed since she wouldn’t even speak to me the entire six hour trip to Tech City. Once we were inside the fortified district, she silently abandoned me and headed to the market area to trade some tech. I wanted to scream at her back, but some small part of me knew she wasn’t leaving me to possibly die alone, without her, because she was a cruel, heartless, selfish lover. If our roles were reversed, I don’t know exactly how deep into psychosis I’d go if I had to watch her die before my eyes, screaming until her last breath. I knew why she acted the way she did, at least I thought I did at that moment. I resented her for it, but I understood it.
“I don’t know if you truly do, Andreada,” Ebbers said softly, breaking my wandering, furious thoughts. He looked away. “When she first met you, you’re all she talked about. You’re all she still talks about, except now, instead of how much she cares for you, how you make her feel on every sensory level, she’s spent the last six months begging me to guarantee you’d survive the attempt with all your limbs and beautiful face intact.”
“Really?” I asked, dumbfounded.
Melly loved me, that was plain as day, as plain and easy to spot as my love for her, but I never heard her talk about me in such a way to any of our friends or contacts. Mellisandra typically talked to others in her gruff, commanding voice, and others typically did whatever she said or asked with very little debate or questioning.
Ebbers laughed. “Silly girl, she’s probably down in the market pissing and moaning about how you’re a foolish young woman who can’t wait to die and rip yourself from her life.”
“And you think she’s right?” I asked, imagining the woman I loved with every fiber of my being as she stomped around the stalls and counters, annoying everyone in earshot with her complaints about me. I couldn’t stop the smile that formed at the corners of my mouth.
“Yes, she’s right. You are a fool.” Ebbers gave me his sternest look, one reserved for a six year old child who had been caught stealing. “Drea… why can’t you just wait? You’ve got almost fifteen years left before you have to really start worrying. That’s fifteen years of what you’ve been gifted by the gods or fate or just pure luck. Why would you risk that? Risk hurting her so deeply after knowing how she imploded after Dogan?”
“What about Dogan?” I asked, suddenly very interested in what I’d begun to tune out when it initially sounded like another lecture on how selfish, arrogant, and thoughtless I was being.
“She didn’t tell you?”
“She’s mentioned him a few times, but won’t talk about him.”
“Not surprising,” Ebbers said, leaning back in his makeshift chair. “It’s probably better you hear it from her.”
“I’ve been down that road before. We’ve degenerated into arguments where objects have been thrown…”
“I can imagine. Look, this is important to her. She’ll hate me for telling you what she should have said already, especially at some point this morning on your way here. But you need to know. You need to understand why she’s acting this way.”
“Okay,” I said in a small voice.
I suddenly didn’t want to know exactly how deep the scar within her was. I definitely didn’t want to know how I was apparently ripping open that old wound, or more likely, adding a second scar right next to it if things didn’t work out. But I was selfish. I was too worried about the ticking bomb, whatever it was, that culled all of us on our 40th birthday. Too worried that I’d be sent through the Justice portal. It was always about me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“Drea, do you know what happens when your clock gets stopped?” Ebbers asked. He must have seen the shift in my expression to regret.
“We’re free? No more counting the days until we have to walk through the portal or die by combustion?”
“Yes, that’s part of it. But what about the time scale? How long do you think a human would ‘naturally’ live with the timer?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I’d never given it as much thought as just getting the damned thing out of my life. “Another fifty years? A hundred?”
Ebbers sighed. “That’s pretty positive thinking, The Bower being such a friendly place and all.”
“Well, you did say naturally. What about you? How long since your clock was stopped?”
Ebbers looked away. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me. I’m about to risk a horrible death just to be with the woman I love. The woman for whom I’ve killed others to protect.”
“Two hundred seventy-one years.”
“Bullshit,” I said.
He looked my age. Like Melly’s age. I looked twenty-five, and I wouldn’t look that much older when my 40th birthday arrived, but it would be noticeable. Even if humans could live three centuries, they’d certainly look older than Ebbers, who could pass as my younger brother.
“I told you,” he said, looking me directly in the eyes. “But it’s true. Mellisandra is the one who helped me figure out how to decrypt the timer’s security functions. She’s also the one who talked me into setting all of this up.” He swept his hands out to mean the labs he oversaw. Or maybe the entirety of Tech City, knowing Mellisandra.
“So you disabled her clock?”
He laughed. “No, she’d already figured out how to shut down her own timer.” Ebbers’ eyes became misty. “I loved her so much… especially after she helped me stop my own clock.”
“You two were together?” I asked with surprise.
I knew Melly loved men and women equally, but I had never heard a shred of info about Ebbers and Melly being a thing. Then again, I’d always assumed Ebbers was what I thought Melly’s age to be, somewhere between forty and one hundred.
“No, not like that,” he said with a slight cringe that was softened by laughter. “Not like I wanted. I really, really loved her with all my heart, but she was with Dogan. I loved Dogan too. He was fiercely protective of her even though she was ten times the fighter Dogan and I combined were.”
“Then that means she’s…”
“Older than me.” He chuckled then leaned forward. “Melly and Dogan had been in love from the day she rescued him from the barrier, much like she did for you. Dogan was only sixteen at the time, a street tough who had murdered a number of others in a blowout one night. He didn’t talk about it much, but the other two who were with him when he crossed the barrier didn’t make it.
“I don’t know if they became lovers immediately, but the two could never be separated after that. According to her, anyway, but when I came crawling through the rubble fifteen years later, the two were still attached at the hip. I can’t remember them ever being more than twenty meters apart.”
“What happened to him?” I asked, drawn into the story. I wondered if Ebbers was using some form of psychology on me to lower my firewall so he could talk me out of getting my clock stopped. I didn’t care. Dogan was a massive, unhealed wound on Melly’s heart, and I had to know why.
“Well, within three years of rescuing me at the barrier, we’d founded Tech City. I had worked in the Upperjustice Ministry, in the portal division. I processed criminals and other undesirables, finalizing their records and authorizing their ‘push’ through the Justice portal, so to speak.”
Ebbers looked haunted, distraught at the memories of his job.
“You didn’t actually push them in, did you?
”
“No, not physically. I never actually met any of them, to be honest. I just made sure the security checks on their clocks were programmed to activate the Justice portal. But still… I sent a lot of men and women to their fate…”
“Where did they go?” I asked, fear making my stomach contract painfully.
“No one knows,” he said, and I felt myself deflate in disappointment, though the knot of fear still plagued me. “Just like we don’t know where they go when they cross through the main portal. That knowledge has been locked away from anyone with human DNA.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don't be. We all have a role to play in society. We live our lives, making sure nothing ever progresses, nothing ever changes. We do our jobs and when our time comes, we go through the portal just like hundreds of billions before us.”
“Hundreds of billions?”
“Drea… we, humanity, has been in this endless loop of departures for almost three thousand years.”
I felt my stomach lurch again. “Bullshit.”
“It’s impossible to believe, but it’s true. For at least three thousand years, we’ve continued the program for the Jurda. Or the Arans. Or maybe neither, maybe some other entity has somehow forced humanity into this existence. Maybe we did it to ourselves, for whatever reasons.”
“Bullshit,” I said again. “It’s barely been half a millennium since we first branched out to the stars.”
“That’s what we’re taught in schools. Except three hundred years ago, it was still barely half a millennium since we’d first began wandering outside of our own solar system. Think about it, Andreada. All that war, all that destruction, all taking place over thousands of light years… how the hell could all of that happen in four or five hundred years? And more importantly, how is it that you and I are three centuries apart yet our memory of history is nearly identical, as if we’ve both just graduated from Secondary this afternoon?”
“I don’t know,” I said, reeling from the implications. As fascinating (or frightening) as they were, they didn’t really have anything to do with me wanting to stop my clock this very afternoon. “How old is Melly?” I asked.