That was a difficult week. I was alone. The change in medications and the weightlessness made me sick. I’m not ashamed to admit that I spent most of that week trying to figure out how to open the external doors. If I could have figured out how to vent myself into space I would have done so in a second, but Rosen had protected his investment more carefully than that. Another week or two passed, and there were no more letters from you.
Ben started writing to me after he’d finished medical school. I’m glad he did. If he hadn’t I’m sure I would have figured out that bloody door sooner or later. I hear your voice in his writing. The way he tells me about the little things. His jobs. His girlfriends. His marriages. His children. It seems to me he is a good man. If he has a flaw it is that his eye is always on the next thing instead of the current one. He looked forward to his early retirement for the best part of a decade, and then the moment he retired he regretted it and started making plans to go back to work. I hope you are smiling when you read this. I hope it reminds you of me as much as it reminds me of myself.
He avoids talking about you. I imagine he’s afraid of upsetting me. I try not to push him too hard in my letters but I have managed to squeeze a few details from him over the years. He tells me that you travelled, that you were known for a while as something of a philanthropist, and that you gave considerably more to health projects abroad than you did to cancer research. You see? He has your sense of humour, I’m sure you know that already. I know that you never remarried, but I hope that you had some lovers along the way. He tells me that you have grown more frail in recent years. You get confused sometimes, but your mind is still sharp and you like to make our grandchildren laugh. He tells me the nurses take good care of you.
My ship has started decelerating. In ten days (or two years) I will be home. My doctors—the new lot, Dr Merck died twenty years ago and I don’t miss him—can barely contain themselves. I am the world’s first time traveller. I expect I shall be famous (briefly anyway, trust me, I know how brief it all is). There will be people who will expect me to build a business again, perhaps they will expect me to recreate what I once had. Rosen’s people have suggested I think about a book deal. I shall have to do something because my accountants tell me the money is all gone.
Rosen died not long after Merck. Liver failure. Though I’m sure you know that. If he is out here in his own capsule he will have to wait another month or two before they can reliably grow him a new one. But somehow I don’t think so. Something in the way the other doctors talk. The questions they don’t ask more than the ones they do. I don’t think he took the treatment. I knew from the beginning I was his guinea pig. Naively I assumed it was the technology he needed to validate.
I’m coming back, my love. What was terminal 132 days ago is now treatable with a single injection. I will suffer some nausea, some people feel dizzy for a week or two I’m told, but these are the least of my side effects. Our beautiful son is five years older than I am and I have no idea which of us is supposed to act the grown up. Our youngest grandson is twelve, about the same age Ben was when I left. And you …
You used to tell me I was unable to live in the moment. I disagreed. Everyone lives in the moment, I said. But you were right, I see that now. We deny death, we can’t help it. We talk about it, we pretend to accept it, but it is a slippery concept. Even in those moments when I had no hope, death was never more than a blank, unprocessed mass for me.
Ben says I can stay with him when I get out of hospital. He tells me the woods up near his house are beautiful and that he likes to take his son riding there sometimes. So now I have another strange idea in my head. I thought maybe we could go together to the woods, and we could watch our grandson ride his bike. Would you mind that? We could walk side by side with the dried leaves under our feet and the bare branches over our heads just like we did once before. I used to expect so much from life but now this is all I can think to ask. Would you hold my arm and laugh if I can think of a joke to tell? I know I have no right. But if you are willing, I think the universe will be kind.
Adam Connors is a recovering physicist. His stories have appeared in Comma Press’ Brace Anthology, Shooter Magazine, and a few other small press publications. He lives in Hertfordshire and splits his time between writing, family, and working for a large west coast technology company.
Nothing to Fear
Nat Newman
Art: Becca McCall
Nothing much particularly comes to mind, when I think about it. All those other days, something happened, you know, but now that you mention it I can’t think of anything from that day. Was that the day we went to the beach? No, it can’t have been, because that wasn’t an Even Day—we can only ever go to the beach on Even Days, that’s our day. No, it was an Odd Day, wasn’t it, the one you’re asking about? Well, we can’t have gone to the beach, then. Maybe it was a school day …? But then you already said it wasn’t an Allocated Useful Day. Well, you’ve got me there!
So, it was an Odd Day, a non-use day? I suppose we must have done our shopping, what else could we do? What’s that? It was a Third Week? Oh, no, we can only do our shopping on Second Weeks. I’m stumped. Like I say, nothing comes to mind. Could you check your CCTV and tell me where I was? What, you want to hear it from me? Oh well. Let’s see. It was an Odd Day, on a non-use allocation, in a Third Week...
Oh I know! Normally on a Third Week we go to visit my sister for mid-meal! Except last cycle, she got moved to Fourth Week visits so we couldn’t. Very inconvenient; I remember now. We had planned to visit her but we were totally put out—she couldn’t phone us until the eleventh hour because she was all out of calling credits. We were very nearly out the door, all of us expecting a lovely hot lunch. Especially Tyler—you’ve never seen anyone so small eat so much! And then, right then, just as we’d all put our coats on, comes the call. “Can’t have youse,” she said, just like that. “My visiting week’s been moved.” And we had to stay in and eat sandwiches. Luckily we still had some bread, and it wasn’t even that old at all, because of the week before being a shopping week. Well, I remember it all now. Thank goodness life is so organised. We were all at home that day, doing nothing. Reading and playing games, I suppose. Yes, that Odd Day, on a Third Week, on a non-use day at the eleventh hour. We were doing nothing, nothing at all.
Well, I’m glad that’s been all cleared up. Now, how can I help you gentlemen? What was it you came for? What was it you wanted to know?
Nat Newman is an Australian writer currently living in Croatia, where the cheap beer and tough language make it really easy to skive off from writing her novel. Nat blogs about toilets, travel and beer at www.lividlili.com and can be found all too frequently @lividlili
Perennials
Daniel Rosen
Art: Becca McCall
Emily puts on lipstick in the bathroom. She puts on the perfume that smells like grapefruit, the green eyeshadow and glitter. She pulls on knee-high leather boots, and the neon-patched Hello Kitty backpack that holds the whole outfit together. Emily is going out tonight.
We met when we were young, before the asteroids hit. Before the Vectors. She hasn’t changed much since then. It’s like living with a teenager. I hate her DJs and she hates my cigarettes. Nobody wins. We just stay out of each other’s way, as much as we’re able. We survive.
She’ll come home tonight with some braindead from the Liquor Lounge and they’ll moan and gasp until Emily finishes and kicks him out. Strangers never stay, not this close to the change. Emily and I have a big day tomorrow.
Sometime before sunrise, we will fall in love.
We’ll make each other coffee. In the afternoon, we’ll plant lilies. At night, we’ll lie together until our legs shake and our toes cramp. We rarely do laundry or spring cleaning. Time is too precious. Ours is a love that burns through sickness and health. For the rest of the month, we avoid each other. That’s what it’s like for couples with Vectors.
My Vector doesn’t mind the mole on Emily’s nose, and hers ignores my bad breath and poor posture. The Vectors don’t listen to trap music, or smoke cigarettes. They don’t do much at all, really, except gaze into each other’s eyes and drool cliches. Long walks. Dinners by candlelight. It’s sickening. I have to live through it all, powerless behind my own eyes.
I hear the front door slam. I put out what’s left of my cigarette, go inside, and get ready for bed. I have a big day coming up.
*
I can hear Emily and her boytoy from my fold-out cot in the kitchen. The mattress plays a symphony of “Yeahs” and “Ohs” and “Fucks”, increasing in tempo until the rhythm suddenly disappears, drops off entirely to be followed by a coda of whispers. That’s the cue. I check my watch. 2:47AM. Pretty early for the change, but Emily’s Vector usually takes over before mine. That’s always the worst part, seeing her become someone else entirely, someone who loves me, and knowing that soon I’ll be lost in the same way.
The front door slams. I hold in my chuckle. Vectors aren’t transmitted sexually, but all the same, no one wants to sleep with us. Most people are terrified when they find out. What if you become one? What if you lose yourself to some alien parasite every month for the rest of your life? The horror.
Then the bedroom door creaks open softly, and I brace myself.
“Dave?”
“In here.”
She walks in, flips on the light switch. Her makeup is streaked across her face. She’s a raccoon that’s gotten into a box of oil paint. Beneath the rainbow colors on her head and neck, she’s naked, her skin flushed a single uniform pink.
“You haven’t… changed over yet?” She says. She always seems to know, somehow that I haven’t. It doesn’t stop her from asking. My gut wrenches, as if in response to her question. I don’t have long, but I’ll fight it as long as I can.
“Does it ever bother you? Taking over someone else’s body?”
She bites her lip, a tic unique to Emily’s Vector. “Oh, Dave. You know it’s not like that. You’re just ... you’ll be better soon, I promise. You’ll remember what it’s like, and everything will be all right.”
“Leave me alone. Give me my last minutes in peace.” I can already feel the tightening in my stomach, the tingle in my spine, my own Vector responding to Emily’s. “You know I don’t want to talk to you.” She looks away, hurt in a way that Emily never is when we fight or argue.
But I do want to talk to her. If only I could make her understand how terrible it is to lose my identity. No one should need to go through it. Not even Emily, hate her though I might. And then I realize that she’s sitting next to me on the cot, and she’s warm. She’s so warm. She radiates heat right through my blanket.
And in the next moment, I’m Dave instead of David.
*
Em moans when I bite her ear. First comes the whisper, and then the brush of lips, and then the single sharp nip to set her off. I do it once more for the sake of symmetry, and she gasps and tries to roll off me. I hold her there, whispering again:
“I love you.”
Nothing has ever been truer. Our days, our hours, they’re worth more than platinum. Worth more than perfectly debugged software. Priceless.
Em doesn’t stay awake long. She never does, on the first night. She’s tired from a long night out, and besides, the Other David sleeps all day. I’m full of energy. The moon is full, and our apartment overlooks the Mississippi. I’ve got time to get a run in. Emily stirs only briefly as I rise out of bed, almost invisible in the darkness.
Outside, the air is slick against my skin. The moon hangs heavy over the river, dripping moonbeams into wide puddles on the surface of the water. I cycle my legs between heartbeats, willing them faster and faster until my lungs heave like bellows. No matter how hard I try, I can’t go as fast as I used to.
David takes poor care of our body. He sits and putters about at his computer all day. He reads and codes and watches cat videos. Top ten lists. Clickbait. Empty calories.
I round the bend, crossing under the bridge that used to carry grain before factories and food production dried up in the cities. There’s a couple curled up on the bench. I wonder if they’re Vectors, how long they’ve been in love. It’s a beautiful night to spend out on the river. I’d bother Em about it, but I can’t blame her for being tired. Her body is in even worse shape than David’s.
I don’t slow down or stop running. You don’t get better if you give up.
