Pills and Starships (5 page)

“Quit while you’re still
ahead?”
I asked.

I didn’t know whether to call bullshit on him. What stopped me was a sudden suspicion he really believed what he was saying.

“Darlings,” added my mother, “you were born so
recently
—it’s only been the blink of an eye. You’re great at just living in the now, you roll with everything. You have resilience. Both of us admire you for it. We so
admire
that quality. We wish we were that way ourselves. But we’re not.”

“Oh,
please
,” countered Sam.

“Try to see it from our point of view!” said my father. “When we were young, there were still big animals swimming all over the oceans! The rivers and the forests had all this life in them, not just the rats and pigeons. They barely cared about carbon footprints then, they were still trying to grow bigger and bigger instead of downsize. You could go anywhere in the world—we drove a gas-burning car when we were young! We flew on real airplanes! Sara—our honeymoon flight emitted
two hundred tons
of CO2, didn’t it, honey?”

“It did,” nodded our mother, musing. “For maybe three hundred passengers. A five-hour flight, children! Insane to think about now.”

“The only people who agitated were treehugs like us, and everyone ignored us. And even though both of us
were
treehugs, we still flew. I mean, it was the opposite of illegal—it was
encouraged
. There were desserts made out of ice. And cities lasted for
centuries
.”

“We know this already, Dad,” said Sam. “It’s ancient history.”

“But it wasn’t the luxuries we had,” continued my mother, clearing her throat. “We couldn’t care
less
about those. What we miss was the feeling that we were supposed to
be
here. When this world was truly our home we didn’t have to keep changing gated communities every couple of years just for access to high-rated drinking water that didn’t have to be tested daily. Can you believe, we used to use drinking water to wash away our personal
waste
? We didn’t
have
to stand in lines whenever an alert came out to wait for nearly useless shots that would maybe possibly keep our children alive through the newest strain of a bug-borne disease. We could choose our own food, not have it rationed out and delivered. Look—we could go out on the street whenever we felt like it. We’d meet new people whenever we wanted!”

We’d heard it all before, frankly. My parents keep thinking, somehow, that one day we’ll hear about how different history was and for the first time light will shine down like godrays from up there in the cumulus and we’ll get it.

But we’re like, there’s nothing
to
understand. I mean, yeah, it’s different now from how it used to be. We know that. Isn’t that pretty much the
definition
of history? We
do
get it. Time passes. A bunch of stuff changes. I bet it’s always been that way, with parents lecturing kids about the olden and golden.

Sometimes we get restless about our parents being stick-in-the-muds. In one sense it’s like, get used to it! This is the
actual world!

I used to feel that way fully: impatient with them for whining about past excellence. But recently, I have to admit, I’m not quite so sure anymore. Sometimes I feel unsteady on my feet all of a sudden—mostly when I get a peek at something disturbing on face.

In flesh we don’t get much of a chance at being shocked, or not often. Mostly, Sam says and I agree, that’s just because we can’t get out of the complex much.

“For old world people like us, you know,” said my mother in a realer tone, “it’s like we’re watching a tragedy. You see? The play was long and really painful to watch, and it stretched across the entire horizon. But finally it ended and now we want to leave our seats. We’re desperate to leave our seats! We’re aching from watching this!” She was getting agitated and I watched her stop it and bring her expression under control again. “But the actors just keep taking bows, again and again . . .”

“Damn those actors,” said my father, and he and my mother suddenly smiled at each other, two smiles of sympathy that vanished quickly when they seemed to remember what was going on.

“What’s a play?” asked Sam, with slight and grudging interest.

He doesn’t go in for 20th c. vids the way I do. There are plenty of plays to browse, I’ve found old performances called
Shakespeared
or
Broadsway
. I watched one once. Plays were like movievids, but for the mentally challenged and also deaf people: their actors spoke very, very slowly, pronouncing their words extremely loud and exaggerated.

“So, uh, then
we’re
the ones taking too many bows?” I interrupted. “That you don’t want to watch anymore?”

“I didn’t actually mean that, sweetie,” said my mother. “Bad simile, I admit. You have kept us here because we
want
to be with you. And we still do. We’d stay with the two of you forever, if we could. But . . .” She looked queasy all of a sudden and turned away for a second.

“Our point is,” my father said, “we don’t think we can bear to observe—what happens if the trajectory—if it keeps going how we think it will. Of course, we hope and pray it won’t,” he added, tossing back the last of his whiskey.

“We hope we’re in the wrong. We hope our model is deeply flawed,” my mother nodded.

Their model is one of the most popular, mainstream ones. It’s kind of on the pessimistic side of average, maybe, but not far from the middle. Its macropredict is a global population crash a few decades from now, then disintegration of the species into small, isolated outposts in clusters around the last freshwater aquifers in temperate zones, surviving hand to mouth.

I’ll be in my sixties.

“We figure, go early, while everything’s—while there’s still hope, you know,” said my father. “For you . . . and . . .”

But somehow he had confused himself.

He looked for a place to put down his empty tumbler, rotating as he held it out, as though there should be a table beside him. But there was nothing, so he strode backward toward the counter that divided the living room from the kitchen.

What they weren’t saying, but obviously were, was they couldn’t stand to see
our
future. They could stand their own misery but not the prospect of us biting the dust too.

It’s widespread. Along with the carbon footprint of new humans, it’s why there are no babies anymore.

But most people don’t talk about it.

“Your model is pure fantasy,” said Sam.

Sam doesn’t have a model. When it comes to models, he’s an atheist. I’m more like agnostic.

“Let’s all be kind, shall we?” said Jean, more purring than rebuking.

“Honey,” said my mother to Sam, “don’t be angry. Or,” and she shot a look at Jean here like she was doing something she’d been taught to do—“I mean, I know it’s hard, and I understand your anger, I really do, honey. But please
try
to understand our needs as well. We’ve been thinking about this for years. You are the
only
things that kept us here. I promise you, Sammy, we don’t take it lightly. It’s very painful for us too.”

“It’s never an easy decision,” put in Jean.

Not too helpful, I thought.

But then, they put the counselors there partly to deflect family members’ fear, rage, and resentment from the contract buyers. Once you see it, it’s transparent.

“Your mother has always taken care of things, Sam,” said my father, in profile. He was fiddling with a pile of black olives on a tray. The olives were stacked in a pyramid, like in a picture I’d once seen of ancient cannonballs. They should have been a tipoff that this was a special occasion, so to speak, because they’re not the kind of food we get every day. Yet I hadn’t even noticed them till now.

My dad poked at the top olive with a red-flagged toothpick. He didn’t seem to have an appetite.

“She’s worked hard to keep you kids safe and healthy,” he went on. “But she’s so
tired
. Bone-tired. We both are, if I’m perfectly honest. Not in our bodies, in our minds. We don’t want to go downhill mood-wise and then have you always remember us that way. But it’s what will happen. If we don’t just get out soon.”

We sat there for a while, not knowing what to say—nothing to say at all. We had objections but it felt like there was something large and breakable in the room.

Eventually Jean suggested we take a walk outside, through the courtyards of the complex. Walks are quite popular with the service corps.
Low-cost momentum and a natural mood boost!
The corps believe in forward motion; they don’t approve of standing still.

So we prepared ourselves fresh drinks, mostly in awkward silence, and took them with us into the elevator. Sam stood next to me, behind our parents and behind Jean, hunched and pale with his back to them. We gazed outside as the car descended.

The elevators in our complex are external and made of shaded plexi (salvage from an olden shopping center, my mother says) so you can see the sky and then the buildings below it and then, as you drop, the changing levels of the courtyard gardens. Above the tops of the trees swoop hills and valleys of Invisinet, a mesh you can’t see till you’re up close to it. It used to be used in zoo exhibits, when those existed in the flesh as well as on face. Now it keeps the approved wildlife in and banned wildlife out.

The management doesn’t want random unknown starlings or doves—they could have parasites, could bring in one of the flus or malarial spinoffs, migrating just like people do, with the heat waves and microclimates and changing ecologies.

There are also, in these courtyard gardens, more exotic birds, beyond the sparrows and pigeons: some peacocks and peahens, a moody emu, a bevy of fat quail. The groundskeepers bring in new animals now and then to mix it up a little. They’re my favorite part of where we live, and I go out for my sun time to the maximum allowed because I love to follow them around whenever I spot them.

After a couple of floors with a sky view you drop into the canopy, the trees opening themselves to you with their complex curving architecture and green hollows. There are squirrel nests there—or sorry, chipmunk nests—and elaborate, well-populated birdhouses, even the odd raccoon. Sam claims he saw a porcupine once that sat right on a branch, huddled like a spiky ball. Looking too wide to balance there.

Down through the green canopy, down along the tree trunks, and finally we landed facing the landscaped rock gardens, the fountains and splashing waterfalls of perfectly reclaimed sewage. At ground level the courtyard suffers from a minor mouse problem, and stepping off the elevator onto the patio we saw little beige mice skitter away from our feet.

They sneak in for the birdseed.

“What a nice evening,” said my mother, and we looked up dutifully at the fading bands of red and yellow in the western sky.

One thing we do have, in the new world, is beautiful sunsets.

They’re on their way back from the cliffwalk now. I see them coming up the path again, so close they’re almost beneath me—I see the three circles of their shiny white umbrellas.

We have our first counseling session next, then spa treatments, then drinks and dinner in the Twilight Lounge. It’s the flagship room of the resort, which calls itself the Twilight Island Acropolis.

And that’s another thing you wouldn’t know from outer space, o astronaut reader. This kind of resort hotel is partitioned. It’s not a contract-only venue, although there are some like that, only for contracts and survivors. No, parts of this resort are multipurpose and others are only for us. Don’t get me wrong, all resort guests have been carefully vetted for their codes—no one has to carry their handface here to transmit them. We’re all preapproved for socializing with each other, just in case, but service likes things organized. They don’t want a chaotic mingling; they don’t like humans milling around loosely.

The Twilight Lounge is a contract-only area.

We have a map of the hotel—it came inside the Coping Kit—and all the colors just for us are shaded in pale lavender. We can go into the other parts too, but people who don’t have contracts can’t come into the lavender areas. So you won’t see newlyweds in the lounge, or casual vacationers. Of course, vacationers are only the superrich these days or people with high connex. But some extremely affluent newlyweds buy travel permits, and Hawaii’s Big Island is still popular with them.

Anyway, I haven’t been to the Twilight Lounge yet. I’ve only been to the lobby, the waste room down the hall, and this suite.

Half the time I feel like throwing my arms around both of my parents and not letting go, the other half of the time I feel pretty distant. Even a little bit repelled.

The handbook in the Coping Kit has whole sections on the psych of Final Weeks. They claim that repulsion is caused by resentment, along with some “feeling-detaching mechanics.”

I can believe it. The worst I’ve felt so far was when Sam and I picked them up at the condo to leave for the Port of Seattle. They’d helped us to move out by then, to this group home for survivors who aren’t quite old enough to live alone. It’s where we’re going to live starting when we get back, after the boat trip home. We’ll be there for a year and a half, until I turn eighteen. If I’ve got certified by then for work phase, I’ll get matched with a corporate and take on Sam’s guardianship as a wage earner. I’m fairly cool with that part of things, because we’ll meet new people in the transition home—new people our own age. It’s not terrible to contemplate.