by H C Edwards
“Stop!”
A step, then two, three, and she was running, running as if she could escape the memory that pursued her, escape the pain and the rage and the hate.
She ran until the breath in her body fell short, until her legs felt wobbly and jelly-like and she had to hold herself up against the trunk of a maple tree to keep from collapsing. And though she threw up twice and her stomach clenched in retaliation, it did nothing to dispel the rage that consumed her.
This is what it felt like, she thought. This is what he must feel, head filled with nothing but white-hot fire, electricity surging through veins. She wanted to strike out, pummel something, anything, into submission. The muscles in her arms were twitching, fists clenching and unclenching.
ten little toes
She thought of the COH and the coupling and his goddamn wry smile. She thought of her empty womb, this pathetic puppet body dangling at the end of its strings and she just couldn’t control it anymore.
She screamed; with all the pain and rage she could muster she let it go, a soul-ripping cry that clawed itself out from the depths of her belly like a wild animal smelling freedom.
When her fist lashed out, the bark of the maple tree exploded beneath her hand, and though fire and pain lanced sharply across her knuckles and up her forearm, the pain only fed her rage. Each time her fist struck the tree, the shrapnel flew in all directions, each blow compounded with her screams.
When Mia finally stepped back and stared at the tree, her chest and shoulders heaving with exertion and spent adrenaline, she was in awe of the damage wrought.
The trunk appeared gouged, like some giant beast had mistaken it for prey and attacked it. Splinters and pieces of bark lay everywhere in a circumference as if the wounded tree had coughed up its life’s blood following the attack. It was difficult to grasp the reality of destruction she had caused.
She looked down at her hands and saw the proof of it there; the split skin peeled back from her shredded knuckles and fingers, the blood-
-only looks like blood-
-that oozed dark and thick like syrup as it flowed freely down her forearms and dripped from her elbows. The pain snarled and clawed at her but she found that unlike the pain from his fists, this kind of pain came with a sense of empowerment, of satisfaction.
Mia squeezed her fist tight and watched with a strange fascination as the blood began to pour out in rivulets, the anger slowly ebbing away with each new tributary that was birthed.
An odd thing it was, this semblance of humanity. It had never occurred to her until now what changes there would be upon her revival. She had accepted the process a long time ago as a transitional part of her humanity, like passing into puberty; just another aspect of life.
But now…
She thought about the cutting board that she had snapped in half like a stick in the kitchen, the dumbfounded expression that was stamped upon Tom’s face. After all these years…the guilt mixed with the submission. What had compelled her to this end? What had finally snapped inside of her?
The coupling…
She had always thought that Tom’s grief and guilt matched her own. It was why he had started drinking. It was the reason for the rage and the anger. The guilt had driven him to it, and throughout all the years since the accident, through the beatings and the berating and the constant fear that the winds would shift at any given moment, she had always taken some small solace in the fact that deep down inside where the light of day couldn’t reach, he was hurting just as much as she was.
It was why he had refused further notions of coupling, of finding another match to carry his seed. Even with all the prodding of the COH, he had remained steadfast. Together she and Tom were imperfect, but they were perfectly in sync with their grief…and that was all that she had left.
Only now he had taken that away.
“Ambrose,” she muttered aloud.
It was the first time she had spoken his name in almost twenty years. Just uttering those two syllables caused her throat to snap shut and a gaping hole to open wide in her stomach, sucking in all the remaining anger and euphoria she had just experienced. It took mere moments to extinguish the flame that had stoked her fire, leaving behind only the vile bitterness of regret…and sorrow…a sorrow so deep she could barely catch her breath against the tightness squeezing her chest.
She remembered the day they gave her the happy news. Even with the both of them viable candidates it was always a long shot, but somehow they had done it. They had created a living being together, a tiny human that they could love and cherish and nurture.
“My baby,” she sobbed against the tide of overwhelming grief that washed over her.
Her knees grew weak. She collapsed to the sidewalk, pressing herself against the stalwart tree trunk, the rough bark collecting her tears as she moaned and wailed and then finally screamed…screamed her pain, her sorrow, her fear, screamed because it was all she had left in this world, this pain of hers that would never go away, that would follow her like a shadow…the memory of a dead child.
She didn’t hear the security transports when they pulled up. She wasn’t aware as they yanked her roughly to her feet and scanned the subdermal ID chip on her forearm, and she could have cared less when one of the men yanked her head back by the tuft of her hair and screamed at her to shut the fuck up.
It wasn’t until one of the men placed an object to her neck that she finally stopped screaming and fell limp in their arms, eyes wide open but seeing nothing at all, the last remnants of her screams echoing down the streets of the neighborhood and following her into unconsciousness.
She came to in the back of the transport, a slow waking like the days when dreams were actual physiological reactions to real world situations as opposed to generated computations of data streams.
Eyes opened to images flashing by, droplets of water splattering against the glass window of the transport and running sideways like little highways, blurring the background and bringing the foreground into sharper focus, specifically her reflection and the unmarred features of a face that seemed less and less human the more she looked at it.
The rain made Mia think of better times. There had been days where she would sit by the bay window of their home and stare out at the world as it was cleansed in the waterfall, rubbing her ballooning belly and daydreaming of the endless possibilities that branched out.
There had been real hope then, a sense of purpose…a future.
That was more than two decades ago, a short amount of time considering the everlasting life she had been granted, but it felt like yesterday. She needed it to feel like yesterday. Without that memory or the precious few others she had, she might as well have been a husk, a chrysalis without a butterfly.
Those memories had kept her afloat all these years. Slight they were and brief but she knew each moment as if it were the other day. She recalled the first time she felt Ambrose’s kick, that eye popping physical hiccup that propelled her to her feet in shock, followed by a bray of laughter when she realized it for what it was.
The mapping at the clinic was another moment, the first time Mia had seen him in all his glory, curled up in perfect form with one arm touted against his cheek and the other placed atop his head, as if he were attempting to pull himself into a tighter ball.
the heartbeat
She had them make a looped recording for her to take home that day, one of the few demands she ever made in her privileged life.
That night she listened to it repeatedly like a mantra, scarcely believing that such a thing was possible, that she was carrying an actual human being inside of her, a person who would one day walk and talk and laugh and sing and grow and become…
How she had longed to hold him in her arms, pressed tight against her chest so that their heartbeats melted into one; coo to him senseless nothings and bat her eyelashes against his smooth cheeks and tell him how much she loved him…how much she would always love him.
In those days Tom w
as a different man. He was gentle, wry without the sarcasm…and witty. How he would make her laugh. Not just chuckles but actual guffaws; laughter that made her hold her belly for fear that it would burst with mirth.
There were long nights in bed with the lights off, arms wrapped around each other as they whispered their dreams and hopes and fears. They talked of nothing and of everything.
He would stoke her back and knead the muscles along her spine with his fingertips and when he told her that he loved her it was always with a whisper, a gasp of breath, as if his soul were speaking to her.
They would make love desperately, knowing that the sun might not rise the next day, lips eager and forceful, hands pulling and grasping, feeling a hunger as if it were never enough, certain that time was a construct that would fall apart at the meekest glance. And when they were both spent and satisfied they would lie in each other’s arms and he would trace his fingers lightly across her face with their lips inches apart and she knew that he was hers and she was his and that everything was as it should be.
It all seemed so long ago…another lifetime for certain.
“It’s the rain,” Mia murmured aloud.
“What’s that?” was the response she received from one of the security agents in the front seat of the transport, a curt and clipped question that was more suppressive than it was inquisitive.
“Nothing,” she replied.
The rain makes it all come back…not just the good…but the bad…
Such privilege they’d known in those days…amenities. It was a fairytale life. What was asked for was given. Even the wildest requests were considered and in some capacity granted.
The city had not procured nearly enough breeders that year to sustain the growth of the human population. Despite their best efforts, Akropolis had seen a slow but steady decline of fertile citizens versus a steady incline of sterile ones. While this was not news to anyone, that particular year saw a plunge in the fecund population… and so they made concessions for those that they could draw away from the other settlements for coupling.
Advertisements sent far and wide promised such prosperity the likes of which no one had ever dreamed, perhaps not since before the war when civilization knew affluence for the famous and the wealthy.
Along with the ‘perks’ there was also absolution, not just for the breeders but for any existing family. That was what drew Mia away from Denver so long ago, not forgiveness for her but for her father.
And when Mia had arrived and met Tom she knew that she had made the right choice, hindsight notwithstanding.
They had four wonderful years together before the accident, before she lost her body and her baby and awoke in this Frankenstein costume wrapped around what was left of her soul.
There was no actual memory of the accident. Even though she had uploaded seconds before it all happened they had erased the incident from the Cloud. To spare her the pain of reliving it was their explanation, and at the time it seemed a reasonable excuse, but she often wondered if there was another reason, one they kept secret.
Tom remembered, but then he had walked away from it all with only a punctured lung and a few broken bones, nothing that couldn’t be mended at the clinic.
It was there he had demanded her retrieval, despite her never having signed the clause, and of course they had no choice but to comply. She had kept putting it off, never thinking for one moment that her life would end so abruptly, so young.
The first question Mia asked him when she awoke from the Cloud was what happened, and after he explained to her in a halting and gut-wrenching confession, the next question she asked was why.
Why bring her back to this misery, this grief? Why not let her float in the Ether with the soul of her lost child to keep her company? Why...especially when the reason for her whole existence had become moot?
The answer was simple and selfish. She both loathed and loved him in that moment, and when his hands reached out to her in supplication she chose the path that was most familiar to her…she chose love.
I couldn’t live without you…
It was true. Mia knew it the moment the words were out of his mouth. He loved her and she loved him and though she was no longer capable of giving them the family that was promised, they still had each other. They would go on. They would carry their sorrow with them, together, and maybe someday they would find some form of happiness again.
But it hadn’t worked out that way.
Something was born within Tom that same day something else was taken away, something parasitic. It grew, feeding off his guilt, his grief.
The changes were subtle at first, long still silences where he stared at nothing blankly, roused only by the repeated sound of her voice and a gentle shake of his shoulder.
They tried counseling but the sessions only made him defensive and angry, and so he decided they were done with them. He stopped going out, cut off all ties of friendship. Work began to disinterest him and so that too ceased.
It was then he started to brew his secret stash in the basement of their home, a blend of alcohol fermented from the fresh fruit they were able to procure from the Pantheon’s gardens. How he acquired the recipe she did not know, as it was considered outlawed contraband. He could have requested it, and it would have been granted after some deliberation, but she doubted somehow that he wanted anyone to know what he was doing at the time. There would have been more questions, perhaps an insistence on further counseling, and he had already come to despise prying eyes and the overtures of sympathy that were extended.
I couldn’t live without you…
Mia would oft repeat those words in her head as Tom went through these changes. She would remember the feeling she had upon waking when he answered her question.
His words were a shield against her grief, flimsy protection but protection nonetheless. It held the engulfing tide of her own despair at bay. He needed her she knew, and she needed him to.
So she did not begrudge him when he began to drink, thinking perhaps it was a door to access his anguish, and at first it was. He would have a few and it would make him sleepy. Standing, he would stumble about and ask if they could go to bed, and once there he would hold her as the tears tumbled from his eyes and he would tell her he loved her, not with the same passion or fervor as before the accident, but he meant it nonetheless. And she would tell him the same, because the truth was she did.
Those days were spent in silence, her by the bay window looking out at a world that had lost its sheen, a forgotten book in her lap, him in front of the fireplace mere feet away. She had attempted to engage him in conversation so many times she had lost count. Each time she was met with stony silence and in that silence she found a bit of resentment like a lone bud sprouting from a vacant garden.
It was my baby…my life…I could have found him in the Ether, held him in whatever life was after life…but you had to bring me back…you took me away from my baby…
But when he’d had enough and wanted to go to bed, then she knew she was needed; then she knew that something of him was coming out of the fog. She would forget her resentment for she desperately needed those nights and his tears and his professions of love. They were the only times she felt anything other than the pain and bitterness.
If it had stayed that way Mia knew she could have eventually reached him through the fog, but he began to build up a tolerance to the drink, and he needed more and more and couldn’t seem to regulate himself.
The door that opened then was anger, at the world and at circumstance and at himself no doubt. Those nights started off the same, in his lounge chair in front of a fireplace that had never been lit, but they ended with him on his knees pleading nonsensically to the heavens above then screaming in agonizing pain.
Mia would go to him at that point for fear of the neighbors overhearing his screams and calling security, and he would latch onto her with a fierce strength and beg her forgiveness for bringing her back, for not having the strength to do what
he should have done in the first place.
She would shush him as she shed her own tears and tell him that it was going to be ok, though she wondered to herself how it could ever be again. And sooner or later he would end up on the floor snoring loud enough to make the resin floorboards beneath their feet reverberate. She would cover him with a blanket and go back to the bay window and stare out at nothingness as her thoughts swirled like an unending whirlpool until sleep overtook her.
Those days were almost unbearable, for though they shared their grief she was forever alone in hers. He did not seem to understand that she carried a burden just as heavy as his, more so for there was no avenue of escape for her, no drink that would dull the edge of her suffering or that would put her into a stupor for hours on end.
She had her memories. She had her pain. But she had nothing else.
Mia might have gone on like that forever or at least until she found a way to end this artificial existence permanently, if not for one fateful night…the night he hit her for the first time…the night he laid the blame for the death of their child at her feet. It made sense, accounted for the guilt she had felt since the first day she awakened.
Of course it was her fault.
“Hey,” the gruff voice brought her out of her reverie.
The rain had stopped as well as the transport.
She felt groggy; a new experience for her. Perhaps it was the residual effect of the EMP taser or the relentless barrage of memories that never seemed to stop. Either way, it took a moment for her to register where they were.
“Oh,” she replied in disappointment when her sight focused.
Mia was hoping that they would take her to tech for a repair or at least a diagnostics, providing a brief respite from this day, this life.
“You’re home,” said the security guard, the one who had grabbed her by her hair and screamed at her to shut the fuck up.
The guard seemed subdued, maybe even slightly ashamed. Perhaps, she thought, his previous actions were not indicative of his personality. After all, her actions today had been atypical to say the least.