Chapters

 

THE END TIME

 

 

 

 

Prologue

 

 

 

 

Fifty years ago today, the United Global Army flooded Earth’s atmosphere with Furon Gas and drove the invading Tarnacki out of our world and back to their home planet. Nearly five and a half billion human beings lost their lives in the two year struggle to save Earth from annihilation and another billion from starvation when food supplies ran out in areas that couldn’t be reached by the Planetary Red Cross. Tarnacki bunkers raided by United Global Army security forces yielded incredible discoveries and I believe a lot of good came out of them, i.e. food processing machines, universal translators, and such. But I also believe some technologies created by an advanced alien society are not meant for human application, the procedure device being one of them.

 

 

 

Chapter 1

3:45 p.m. Tuesday

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ten more years to live?

Fifty?

Perhaps, a hundred?

I would know the answer to Jane’s results soon.

I shuffled nervously in the chair under hot institutional lights in the small waiting room, my underwear and T-shirt feeling clammy against my skin, while trying to get a grip on my fraying patience. At this very moment, Jane’s physical body lay strapped to a machine built by extraterrestrials while the spiritual energy that is her human life force whisks through bent celestial dimensions until it can travel no further.

The moment of her death.

Her end time.

It twisted my mind to think about it.

No matter how much I learned about the procedure at school, no matter how many times I’d read about the procedure in periodicals and newspapers, no matter how much I’d researched on my own the good, the bad, and all that could go wrong with knowing your own personal end time, I still believed I was absolutely prepared for whatever the outcome.

“Are you doing okay, Mr. Bradly?” the receptionist asked.

Mid-forties, attractive, with graying hair, and wearing a green dress too small for her figure, the receptionist turned away from typing at her computer to face me.

“Just anxious,” I replied. “That’s all.”

“It shouldn’t be much longer.”

Murmuring voices in the hallway caught my attention and the steel door leading to the procedure area opened. A male doctor wearing a white lab coat and blue scrubs stepped through. The door shut automatically behind him.

The doctor’s hair was dark and unruly. Heavy-rimmed glasses with thick lenses that artificially enlarged his eyes rested on the bridge of his nose. His face was clean shaven. I caught a whiff of oniony body odor as if he hadn’t showered in a while as he reached over and placed an electronic tablet onto the receptionist’s desk. The receptionist took the tablet and resumed typing.

“I’m Dr. Menning,” the doctor said. He reached out to shake my hand and a crease formed along his forehead. “Bob Bradly, I presume?”

I shook. “Yes.”

“Jane Powers’ application form states that you are her primary caretaker for her procedure?”

“I am.”

“Before we continue, would you please take this pill? Low level cosmic radiation may emit from a patient’s body for several hours after the procedure. This neutralizes any effects on those in close contact.”

An alarm rang in my head. I’d never once read or heard anything about side effects of having the procedure. Something didn’t seem normal.

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

Doctor Menning filled a small plastic cup with water and handed it to me. He dropped the rather large, white pill into my palm.

“Ms. Powers had an unusual procedure,” he replied. “It took more energy than what’s typical to bring her back.” He motioned to the pill in my hand. “Please.”

 I swallowed it with the water chaser and handed back the empty cup.

“Right now Ms. Powers’ mental condition is quite fragile which is normal after having the procedure. It can be quite distressing witnessing the end of your own life no matter how old you live to be. This is why follow-up counseling plays such a vital role in how a patient copes with this knowledge.”

I nodded benignly. “I understand.”

Dr. Menning pressed his lips together. “And sometimes when the results of the procedure are not what one would have expected the trauma to the psyche can be even more serious.”

The back of my neck tightened “What do you mean?”

Dr. Menning looked at the floor and his glasses slipped to the end of his nose. He gave me an arched glance over them and met my eyes straight, then raised his arm to speak into a communication device strapped to his wrist.

“Bring in Ms. Powers.”

My stomach fluttered.

A moment later, an orderly wheeled Jane who was lying on top of a hospital bed through the steel door and into the waiting room. Her auburn hair fanned out over the pillow. Her face was so pale it looked as if she had no circulation. An unhealthy glaze filmed her eyes which were drowsy slits possessing a distant, zombie-like stare. Her chest barely moved with each breath she took.

I stood nearly overcome by the rush of emotion to comfort and take care of her, make her normal and happy. I hated seeing her like this, like she’d just come out of major surgery when there was no wound that had needed healing, no diseased tissue that had needed removal.

Swallowing subdued the lump in my throat. I reached down to caress her cheek and noticed that my hand was shaking. She became a little more conscious and rolled her eyeballs toward me.

“I…” Her voice came out as a whisper. “I saw my death.”

Queasiness hit but I dredged a smile.

“It’ll be okay,” I assured. “In a few hours you’ll be your normal self.”

Dr. Menning gestured to the orderly. The orderly glanced at me with a troubled expression before wheeling Jane back through the steel door.

“Where is he taking her?” I asked, as they disappeared.

“Recovery includes several hours of follow-up psychological counseling paired with anti-anxiety pharmaceuticals. Will you or a family member be here to pick her up after she’s completed? She’ll be in no state to drive.”

“I’ll be here.”

“Excellent. Is your telephone number on file?”

Uneasiness swept through me. I nodded.

“Is Jane okay?” I questioned. “She doesn’t seem okay.”

“Everything Ms. Powers is going through is on par for the procedure and recovery. Knowing the date and manner by which one’s own life ends can be very distressing.” Dr. Menning tented his fingers. His gaze seemed to pierce me. “Especially when it is sooner than one would have expected.”

My body electrified. “What are you saying?”

“Before we proceed I think�"”

“Are you saying she doesn’t have much time?”

Dr. Menning removed his glasses and methodically cleaned the lenses with a tissue he withdrew from his lab coat pocket. His eyes did not meet mine.

“The patient should be the one who divulges that information.”

My muscles tensed. Heat rose to my face. “I’m on the confidentiality agreement! I have a right to know the results!”

Dr. Menning looked up and the lines around his eyes deepened. He replaced his glasses.

“You also have the right to counseling yourself, as per the contract that both of you signed. We generally schedule a follow-up session with the primary contact and patient twenty-four to thirty-six hours after the patient has returned home and had time to process what they experienced. But in your situation we can have one ready for you within the hour. Wouldn’t you rather have a psychiatrist with you when you learn the results?”

Questions pressed at my mind.

“I’d like to know before I see Jane.”

Dr. Menning shook his head.

“You do have this right,’ he said, without argument. “Are you absolutely certain you want to hear the results from me?”

I nodded with heavy concern.

“Very well.”

Dr. Menning sighed, looking grim-faced. “As I said before, it can be extremely distressing knowing the date and manner�"”

 “How much time?” I interrupted, feeling frazzled. “A year?” I swallowed a breath. “A month?”

Dr. Menning adjusted his glasses and appeared a bit uncomfortable. He sighed again, and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

 “I’m very sorry, Mr. Bradly.” He looked at the device on his wrist as it relayed information. “The procedure shows Jane’s life expectancy from this moment forward at forty-eight hours and twenty-three minutes. Slightly more than two days.”

“Days?”

Strength in my legs gave way and I could barely keep my knees from buckling. I teetered and sank onto the closest seat, my whole body trembling.

“That’s Thursday,” I said, with a despairing shake of my head. “Not possible. You must have read the results wrong.”

“There is nothing to read or interpret,” Dr. Menning said, his voice controlled. “The scene, the moment of Ms. Powers’ ending, occurred and was recorded. We cannot control nor manipulate the outcome in any way. I’m very sorry.”

I stared at the carpet, at the intricate patterns of color, trying to digest the horrific information. I couldn’t process all that was happening fast enough. Reality didn’t sink in. I wouldn’t let it.

“Jane is in perfect health!” I countered. “She’s healthier than I am! How can she have just two days to live?”

Dr. Menning cleared his throat. “It is not a health related issue that takes her life.”

I glanced up, startled. “An accident?”

He didn’t respond.

“Then it can be avoided?”

His face remained stern, staring at the receptionist still typing at her keyboard. Another possibility hit and burned through my core. I shriveled up inside.

“Murder?”

Dr. Menning turned toward me and I felt the full force of his gaze as if it were a punch.

“I cannot divulge specific information about a patient’s end time even though you signed the confidentiality agreement. Only the patient who has undergone the procedure can tell you how they lose their life and the specifics surrounding the event. Ms. Powers is fully aware of the circumstances contributing to her end time. It is her decision whether or not she wishes to share the experience with you. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” He glanced at the device on his wrist. “I have another procedure scheduled in less than fifteen minutes.”

 

Chapter 2

4:10 p.m. Tuesday

 

 

 

 

The receptionist reiterated that before I could take Jane home she would need about an hour or two of intense psychotherapy as required by govt. law directly following the procedure. I’d read that most of the therapy was to keep individuals with long lives from making poor life choices due to the fact that they knew they were going to be around for a while. Poor choices like eating more pinky slime than what a person requires and getting obese or becoming a drug addict because they know they will survive an overdose. Procedure therapy teaches that what lies between now and your own end time can be productive and fulfilling or it can be years of insufferable pain, unhappiness, and depression, unless that time is used wisely.

Most likely Jane’s therapy will be concentrated on getting her affairs in order and how to say goodbye to those she loves.

 

* * *

 

I decided to make the thirty minute drive back to my cubicle building hoping the trek would help to clear my mind of my distress and confusion. The receptionist would call me when Jane was close to being finished and ready to leave so I could come and get her.

I hit the accelerator and reached the city-pod speed limit of forty-five mph rather quickly before merging into traffic on the city-pod’s main highway, thirteen-lane General Measer Street; named after the man who single-handedly took down a Tarnacki Fighter Ship with a .45 revolver. I was feeling distracted by the bustle of the urban afternoon and swell of 6.7 million govt. workers getting off their 4:00 P.M. shifts simultaneously. There would be an hour break until the other half of the work force clocked in for their 5:00 P.M. shifts. The govt. timed labor this way so each family could spend a minimum of one hour a day together if parents happened to work opposite shifts. It kept citizen moral from slipping to new lows in an already gloomy economy.

Veering left out of the urban center of the city-pod metropolis and into the desolate outskirts, I kept thinking that if Jane only had two days to live than two hours to spend on teaching her how to accept her fate was precious time. Should she really be wasting those hours?

Two days to live!

The absurdity slashed through my rational mind while my brain continued to try to process and accept the information. I rubbed the back of my neck and shifted unnervingly in my seat. The reality of Jane not being in my life anymore was unthinkable. I loved her more than anything in this world. I would gladly trade places and give up my life for hers if it were possible.

It wasn’t.

Results gathered from the procedure have never been wrong. That fact is drilled into every child enrolled in the city-pod school system past the second grade. There is even a required course in high school titled, The Principles, Implications, and Expectations of Knowing One’s Own Means and Time of Death that fully explains the pro’s and con’s of having the procedure and how it may affect your psychological development later as you go through life.

Some lower caste citizens of the city-pod even participate in group fundraisers to raise money for the procedure so they can send their children when they turned eighteen. I would imagine if the results showed at age eighteen that you were going to live for another eighty or ninety years it could be quite liberating. Some of the city-pod’s greatest inventors, thinkers, and politicians of the last fifty years give credit to the procedure for freeing them up of the burden of knowing that death could lurk around any corner at any time. This awareness that they had decades to live instilled the confidence to achieve great things.

My parents had no money or interest in me having the procedure and neither did I. Surviving day-to-day on govt. salary and them not being killed by a renegade hybrid while on active duty was enough drama for my family.

We left our existences to fate.

 

* * *

 

As I drove farther from the populace the road grew narrower and lonelier and I watched the dome-protected rural countryside unwind passed my windshield against the stark black rise of the Appalachian Mountains in the distance. Out here, habitable cubicle buildings were few and far between separated by large, abandoned industrial complexes composed of hundreds of massive and decaying structures that had been used to supply the United Global Army with weaponry during the Great War.

Nearly all cubicle buildings out this far had been abandoned by the population after the sixty-five square mile molecular-reinforced protective dome was completed in 2064 and industries were either shut down because they were Great War related or the ones that still manufactured usable merchandise were relocated more toward the center of the city-pod metropolis in modern complexes. Workers moved to where there was actually work and property values around these parts dropped to such low levels it was easier for the owners to walk away from their cubicle buildings then to try and upkeep and sell their equity. Even the homeless had a hard time surviving out here where there were no stores and no means to attain pinky slime unless you owned a vehicle to drive you into city-pod center.

Sometimes security would perform routine sweeps of these supposedly abandoned cubicle buildings and find a dozen or more people dead of dehydration and starvation. These unfortunate citizens would hear grand tales of empty, majestic housing for the taking and sometimes hiked for days to get here only to find despair and death at the end of the road.

I live way out here because it’s the only home I’d ever known.

About two years ago, after I graduated from high school, I asked my parents if they would loan me money so I could rent a single person cubicle closer to the city-pod center metropolis. I was hoping to find a good govt. job before I turned twenty-one and my mandatory security training was activated. I’d heard that Master Sergeants at boot camp were less severe on those recruits who would be leaving the service after their mandatory year was up, focusing on the security lifers to teach the more complex battle skills.

But as soon as I landed a position filing air quality reports and sunlight dispersion levels for the Environmental Maintenance Division, my father passed away suddenly from a stroke and I was forced to move back home and care for my ailing, grief-stricken mother. She died a few months later, having seemingly lost all will to live without her husband of forty-three years.

I always hoped and believed that Jane and I would marry and that our marriage would last as long as my parents had or longer. Now, that hope was obliterated.

As far away from the hubbub of the city-pod center metropolis that my cubicle was located, and as close to the edge of the dome that it was, it was still the only place in the city-pod where I felt comfortable and at peace. My childhood was forged here.

Most of the other tenants in my building had long since died of old age or moved away. Not many people wanted to live in this remote section where security was at a minimum, and wild, aggressive, free-moving foliage; like python vines, biting crocus, and poison-dart daffodils roamed rampant. But my rent was ultra cheap, literally pennies a day, and the brilliantly colored sunsets reflecting against the curvature of the protective dome at dawn and dusk were breathtakingly beautiful.

For me, there was no other home.

I slowed the car and negotiated a sharp turn toward the far eastern shore. The long stretch of gravel road was deserted as usual as I headed toward the cluster of immense, darkened buildings and toward the parking lot of the massive cubicle building that was my address.

I pulled in and braked with the screech of eroded pads (couldn’t afford new ones) to a jerky stop in my assigned space a few dozen yards from the entrance. Only about twenty cars were ever parked in the thirty-seven hundred space lot, but I still felt somehow my space was mine and I almost always left my car there even though I could park much closer.

Though it is highly illegal for a city-pod citizen to possess a weapon of any kind certain electric stunner devices are permitted by individuals such as myself who live at the far fringes of the city-pod and have necessity to keep dangerous foliage at bay. The electric charge is not enough to inflict serious injury on a person but it will drive away even the most aggressive of mobile plant species. In this desolate landscape of abundant sunshine and plentiful govt. humidity-driven rain their invasive numbers were ever increasing.

I took out my stunner and held it in front of me like a knife-wielding assassin as I stepped across the unkempt path that led into the foyer of my building. Acrid odor of freshly sprayed repellent tinged the air meaning the plant exterminators must have paid their bi-monthly visit. Spraying plant repellant was a free service provided by the govt. in an attempt to maintain an acceptable population of aggressive vegetation.

I pocketed my stunner.

I made it to the front door without a problem (I rarely had one), typed in my access code, and stepped inside the large, vacant interior lobby. Empty guard towers sat close to the ceiling on either side of the room and security posts by the elevators were now abandoned podiums. In its heyday and before the protective dome was completed my building was considered one of the most secure against hybrid attack.

I usually took the stairs up to my cubicle located on the twenty-seventh floor to get in a good workout in preparation for the marathon runs I’d heard security forced new recruits to do in training, but I was so drained by distress and knowing the results of Jane’s procedure that I hadn’t the energy to climb. I walked to the elevator and pressed the up button. The door opened immediately and I wondered if I had been the only person to use it since this morning?

I stepped into the rickety compartment and pressed the number 27. Steel doors rattled shut and the elevator rose slowly, shaking terrifyingly as it moved. Creaking noises from above only added to my despair.

When I was a child I got stuck in this elevator. Workers took more than five hours to safely remove me and get it functioning again. Five hours I sat alone in the dark, hungry and having to pee, listening to creaking and cutting sounds. Fearing at any moment that the shaft would give way and I’d go tumbling down to my death.

It was a horrible experience I still think about all these years later and greatly affects me on the rare occasions that I actually got into this thing, like now. 

After what seemed an eternity the elevator finally stopped moving and the doors rattled open so stiffly I thought they’d get stuck and I’d have to pry them apart as I’d done many times over the years when I was again too tired to take the stairs.

Luckily, they didn’t.

I stepped down the hallway passed the doors of the other cubicles. 2705 which was vacant, cubicle 2706, which was vacant, cubicle 2707, where an elderly woman named Ethel Berg had lived but was recently admitted to the hospital for some unknown reason; to my own home sweet home, cubicle 2708. I pressed my entrance code into the keypad, heard the latch unlock, and pushed the door open. I flicked on the overhead light, ground the palms of my hands into my eyes, and stood in a daze, blinking.

Silence; thick and drawn out. An amazing stillness offset by interval metallic pecking as the ancient heater kicked on and dispersed warmth through the old copper piping. The space looked exactly as I had left it before I’d learned the results of Jane’s procedure. As if the day had never transpired, had never happened. A peaceful, acquiescent moment frozen in time before my whole world had come crashing down.

I looked around at the stacked dishes from last night’s dinner and this morning’s breakfast, at my clothes scattered haphazardly on the couch and my grandmother’s recliner, which my family had inherited upon her passing. My gaze caught Jasper, my pet fern, sitting mutely under the artificial grow lights that fed his dark, jade-colored fronds.

The thought to clean up before I brought Jane over popped into my mind, but I just couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to expend the effort involved. Knowing her very limited future had blackened mine.

I pulled my boots off before stepping inside and onto my wood floor careful not to track in mud and any possible plant seeds. The last thing I needed was burrowing ivy getting into the spaces between the planks and costing me a fortune to repair. Extra money I didn’t have.

For the past two years, I’d been living on my parent’s inheritance and retirement funds and they were quickly dwindling down to zero. Decent work was nearly impossible to find and I had started to worry that I would have to ask Jane for money.

Now, that was the least of my concerns.

Though my cubicle was small even by low caste, city-pod citizen standards, I did have one luxury that many of the old secure-tight buildings didn’t, a tiny window. I maneuvered to it, drew aside the thin white curtain, and looked out at the glitzy geometry of the city-pod skyline nearly thirty miles away. Above the transparency of the protective dome a thin slice of platinum moon silvered the landscape. Bands of cloud stretched across the faded twilight in cottony layers. Stars had begun to prickle the sky.

My gaze traveled farther off toward the perimeter of the city-pod’s protective zone, which in fact, wasn’t that far away from my own cubicle building, maybe a quarter of a mile. From my vantage point, the Schuylkill River ran full and strong outside the dome its polluted water flecked with pieces of city-pod garbage and chunks of rustic relics from the days of the Great War.

On the east bank, where water had been diverted into heavily guarded processing plants along the city-pod aqua ducts, there were a few dots of security lights from the dozens of deserted cubicle buildings which glittered in tiny reflections on the swell. Beyond the protection of the dome was the dangerous, overarching darkness of the untamed wilderness and tens of thousands of hybrids thirsty for human blood.

Hybrids didn’t exist before the Great War. Created as a sort of biological weapon of war, the Tarnacki produced them in a lab using DNA of captured humans and splicing it with DNA from thousands of divergent animal species that had once flourished on the planet before Furon Gas exterminated every living thing except humans, hybrids, and plants.

I didn’t feel threatened by the proximity of the outside world, three lines of defense kept the city-pod safe from hybrid intruders. An inward line which consisted of sporadic outposts manned twenty-four hours a day (the closest was about three miles from my cubicle building). In front of that was a fortified bunker wall which spanned the entire circumference of the protective dome and a skirt of barbed wire which surrounded the perimeter outside. Buried sensors also provided a virtual wall which would alert security in the highly unlikely event that a hybrid actually did breach the dome.

Since it was occasionally necessary for security squads to leave the city-pod to gather raw materials for production purposes, at each of the twenty-four openings into the outside wilderness there was a Genetic Identification Device, another Tarnacki alien technological leftover from the days of the Great War. The device can tell instantly and on a genetic level if you are a human or a hybrid.

In the past, there have been hybrids who tried to pose as human and I’ve been told that you can barely notice the difference with some, even up close. There is always a subtle difference however, some little nuance that is atypical from normal human appearance. The Tarnacki were never successful in creating a perfect human clone/hybrid. Had they been they would have easily infiltrated the protective dome and eliminated humankind.

I stepped away from the window and up to the food processing machine, another Tarnacki bunker discovery. Mine was an ancient, square device about the size of a laptop computer, with a speaker on one side and three toggle switches to unlatch the storage chamber on the other. The top was smooth and reflective, like a stainless steel mirror. The food processing machine ran solely on pinky slime and my indicator said it was running low, enough left in the machine for about a week of meals.

I hated the thought of going to the store and buying more pinky slime. I don’t know why I was so squeamish about the stuff in its raw form since I’d been consuming it my entire life. Probably because of all the stories my grandmother had told me about how wonderful it was to eat fruit and vegetables and chicken and beef and how good natural food had tasted.

Extinct farm animals from the early 21^st century had always fascinated me. I couldn’t imagine what protein sources other than pinky slime could have tasted like. In my secret encyclopedia, I’d read a thousand ways to prepare these creatures and each one sounded more delicious than the next.

When I was young, I remember seeing a picture of a pear in my grandmother’s computer files and marveling at how someone could just pick something from a tree and take a bite. There were no such trees inside the city-pod or in the whole world for all I knew. All city-pod citizens’ nutrition came from govt. run pinky farms. Pinkys were bred in warehouses on the western plains where the sun could power the massive solar processing plants.

I flicked on the food processing machine and leaned close to the speaker. My food processing machine was one of the original 22,000 found in the deserted Tarnacki bunkers at Pittsburg. Back then, the device had sold for a huge amount of money and my grandparent’s used nearly their entire savings to purchase it. Fear of starvation was rampant in those days and having a food processing machine meant security in times of need. When first discovered, the population thought the machines could produce food forever, but soon learned that the initial year or two of Tarnacki food substance they came filled with eventually ran out and the only other source of protein that would work inside the machine was pinky slime. The food processing machine cooked and prepared pinky slime with no waste and no chance of food-borne illness. A machine filled to maximum capacity could last a family of four for months if they didn’t overindulge.

In the years that followed, humans were able to replicate the technology and mass produce food processing machines, minus the full supply of Tarnacki food substance. Now, they cost less than a full tank of gasoline and every citizen owned at least one.

My food processing machine worked just fine for me but it was considered an outdated relic to most of the upper caste. Newer, human designed models were more energy efficient, a little smaller, and weighed a lot less, but in the end every food processing machine in the city-pod produced the same thing, various types of pinky casserole.

Casserole was the only legal way to eat pinky slime. The practice of grilling pinky steaks was outlawed a quarter century ago soon after the last boxes of canned protein sources like dog food and cat food had run out completely and pinky slime became the only available food source. The govt. declared it psychologically impairing to eat what in reality were human body parts.

At the end of my senior year in high school my class took a field trip to see a pinky farm and the huge processing center in action. I remember there were hundreds if not thousands of long rows of stables stretched across the hillside. The roofs were large solar panels. Pinky’s were essentially humans with genetically altered, extremely limited intelligence. We learned each stable housed an impressive one thousand pinkys and that their stomachs had been designed to digest a pulpy, paper product infused with an overabundant supply of enhanced vitamins. Not all the vitamins were digested upon consumption some are designed to store in the pinky’s muscle fibers making the meat a super food that supplied all essential nutrients for the human body.

Young pinkys are raised by small, individual farmsteads dotted throughout the city-pod landscape, who then sell them to the processing plant when they reach six years old. The pinkys spend ten years being raised for slaughter in this facility. It is the largest concentration of pinkys anywhere in the city-pod.

Thinking that there wasn’t much security if the pinkys decided to revolt or try to escape, I realized that if they have a brain the size of a grain of rice they probably don’t have the capacity to think of a plan of escape in the first place.

Our tour continued into the corral area where the pinky’s spend their days roaming the grounds aimlessly while picking up various sized rocks at random. The more muscular the pinky the more valuable per pound on the open trade market for restaurants and shops. There was more protein in muscle than fat; and protein, especially highly processed and refined, was nearly worth its weight in gold.

Pinkys looked exactly like any other person you’d see strolling City-Pod Recreational Park and it was unnerving to see them by the hundreds walking around with glazed eyes and blank expressions. They were literally zombies. With almost no brain that needed to shut down and digest daily information pinky’s didn’t ever need to sleep and spent their days and nights fulfilling their instinctual drive to lift heavy objects and then put them back down.

When the tour led into the main processing area things got really horrifying. I often wondered why we were allowed to see what went on in there in the first place. Perhaps to remind us that certain horrors are necessary in order to continue to survive as a species? Perhaps to desensitize us to the harsh realities of life ex post facto the Great War?

After my class had toured the main control building which was actually a small, cluttered room that housed the switches that worked the stable gates and exercise machinery, we were led to the main processing area where huge numbers of pinkys were penned. We watched as pinkys were led single file down a chute where they walked stupid and aimlessly straight into a ten-foot circumference spinning blade. Body parts and pieces dropped unceremoniously into a large vat meat grater. Blood and body fluids were collected in a separate strainer and used to make pinky sauce and protein drinks. Bones were separated and crushed into pinky powder for mixing with water. A smaller machine collected the head where the hair was torn off by the roots to make fabric while teeth were used to make enamel pills. Not a speck of pinky was wasted.

 

* * *

 

The site of the pinky processing plant was jarring and I had seen a lot of jarring things as a child growing up in a time before the city-pod was officially secure and the nightly news was filled with stories of hybrids worming into the city-pod and randomly murdering pedestrians. I even saw one of these attacks firsthand one afternoon.

I was in junior high school jogging in City-Pod Recreational Park with other members of my track team. Being the fastest, I was well ahead of the group and running alone when a human hybrid with a long whip-like tail jumped from behind some bushes and assaulted a nearby woman who was taking a leisurely stroll. It happened so quickly I didn’t even get a chance to react and try to help her.

The hybrid held up a pistol-like weapon called a blaster, and a thin, red beam shot out hitting the woman squarely in the middle. She actually stood a moment in shocked silence before looking down and realizing there was a grapefruit size hole straight through her belly. She collapsed.

A security officer nearby also witnessed the attack, raced toward the scene, whipped out his govt. issued .45, and fired on the hybrid. I dropped to the ground as the hybrid’s scream pierced the air. It took off at an injured gallop with the security officer chasing and shouting into his hands-free radio for backup and an ambulance.

I laid there for a few moments stunned by what had transpired when a glint of sunlight reflecting off metal caught my eye. The hybrid had dropped its blaster.

It is highly illegal for any city-pod citizen but security personal to possess a weapon of any kind, but a blaster, this was the battle weapon of the Tarnacki; a weapon from another world; a relic from a war that nearly cost the lives of every single living thing on this planet.

My obsession with the Great War and the history of human civilization had always been insatiable. Nearly all digital information about Earth’s past was destroyed in the Great War and only a few paper records survived. I’d research the Great War with the curious, tedious fervor of a news reporter and knew the power of the blaster was unlike any human gun. There was no bullet or projectile, instead it fired a stream of concentrated energy so powerful it could level a building as large as some of the largest abandoned manufacturing plants in the city-pod.

The following month I came back to the park to dig it up where I had hastily buried it behind a domesticated lilac bush. I covertly examined the weapon while staying hidden in the shadows. There were two safety switches and a small dial on the side of the barrel. By turning the dial clockwise or counterclockwise the energy beam could be set to as little as a stun or to full power.

I stashed the blaster in the waistband of my pants and pulled my T-shirt to cover the handle. The ride on the city-pod metro bus back home (before govt. financial budgets cancelled the free shuttle service) was nerve-wracking and the relief I felt when I finally got the blaster safely to my cubicle was like someone splashing a cool washcloth across my over-heated face. The govt. was ruthless when it came to punishing lawbreakers. Just carrying a weapon of this caliber would turn me into the main attraction at a public execution broadcast on all television channels.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist the temptation to fire it.

I’d get my chance a few weeks later after I’d gotten my driver’s license. My parents were both on daytime security duty and had taken the shuttle into the city-pod center metropolis. I skipped school, took the blaster, and drove their car out to the far edges of the protective dome where vast areas of swampland and marsh provided oxygen for the populous and also where wild and dangerous foliage grew untamed. These vegetative-rich areas were rarely monitored by security and there was no continuous surveillance like most desolate parts of the city-pod. It was a perfect place to test the blaster.

I turned the blaster’s power dial to half and aimed at a clump of browned cattails thinking the muddy clump would absorb most of the impact and maybe at most a balloon of muck would pop into the air. But when I switched off the duel safety’s and pressed the fire button a high energy white stream shot from the barrel and blew a hole out of the earth large enough to play a game of football in. Massive chunks of dirt and vegetation fell from the sky.

Scared out of my mind and with adrenaline pumping, I jumped into my parent’s car and peeled away from the scene. Luckily, I made it back to my cubicle without encountering security and later learned on the news that the explosion had brought two full squads of security officers to the scene and the govt. put the entire city-pod on high alert fearing the hybrids had stashed explosives. Schools were cancelled and students were sent home. School was cancelled again the following day and the day after until security deemed the city-pod safe again.

I was so afraid of getting discovered and arrested I only left my cubicle when school was reinstated and then after class I’d come immediately home. When my parents questioned me about my strange behavior, I would venture out and take long walks alone in the old industrial parks imagining what it must have been like when these buildings were running full steam constructing huge arsenals of military weaponry. I spent a good month paranoid, thinking that at any moment I would be confronted and taken to the central govt. for questioning.

Citizens questioned by the govt. were seldom ever seen or heard from again.

I was even frightened to throw the blaster away or bury it in the swamps for worry it would be found and DNA-linked back to me. I decided to stash it away in a place I hoped no one would ever look, my grandmother’s lockbox in the closet in my cubicle.

Security never did issue a final resolution on their findings.

 

* * *

 

“Water,” an electronic device said, snapping me back to the present and my current crisis; Jane’s foreboding death.

“Water,” the device repeated, before I had a chance to respond.

The universal translator was about the size of a coffee mug. It was another of the technologies left by the Tarnacki that humans could easily replicate and every citizen who kept a pet plant in their home had a universal translator so they could communicate with it. I often wondered how plants survived in homes at all before we were able to understand their needs. Living must have been sheer torture for those who didn’t get adequate sunlight, plant food, or the attention they craved, and had no means to convey their wants.

“I just gave you water this morning,” I replied. “Too much water is going to cause root rot again. Remember last time? How awful that felt?”

“Water,” the device repeated, this time in a semi-demanding tone.

I sighed, looked at the universal translator and then at Jasper, his fern fronds a rich, deep, healthy green. Plants lived for the pleasure of immediate satisfaction no matter what the latter consequences and I couldn’t help but spoil him.

“You’ll never learn, will you?” I replied, and went to fetch the liquid. “If you get sick it’s your own fault.”

Plant senses are different than human’s and really only recognize two kinds of human emotion, nice and not nice. If the owners are inherently mean people then no amount of care will make the plant thrive. Some humans practically give up on or abandon their houseplants when they begin to wilt not thinking about the plant’s feelings or lack of emotional attachment as the reasons why they are unhealthy.

That’s how my family acquired Jasper, named after my grandfather’s brother who died in the Great War. My mother was on security patrol and discovered Jasper in a deserted cubicle dried to brittle and nearly dead. He was so weak the translator couldn’t even pick up on his telepathic energy and convert it into human language. My mother spent weeks caring for Jasper, watering him and making sure he received enough nutrients and that the PH balance in his soil was always perfect. She even splurged and spent a whole day’s pay on a high-efficiency grow light and bought special plant food that contained extra vitamins.

In time, Jasper fully recovered and thrived in our loving home. I think the day my mother passed away affected Jasper as much if not more than me. He didn’t communicate for days after the funeral and then when he did the only thing he said for more than a week was; “Where’s mommy?”.

Being of the fern variety, Jasper was not as intelligent as some of the larger, broad leaf houseplants, but he made up for it with his reciprocal love and appreciativeness (as much as plants were emotionally capable). I’ve heard of some of the more intelligent houseplants being rude and even spiteful toward their caretakers. There’s even one documented case of one plant using the translator to get the couple’s baby to eat one of its poisonous leaves. The baby died.

Jasper is as gentle as they come but a little spoiled. I can’t help spoiling him especially after the plant psychiatrist diagnosed him with post traumatic stress disorder and told us he often dreams of being alone in a scorching desert. Jasper hasn’t revealed much of his past to me but I’m sure being as close to death as he was in that cubicle must have freaked him out. What he went through would psychologically affect any plant or human.

“Here you go, buddy,” I said, as I poured water onto the moist dirt in Jasper’s porcelain pot.

“Thank you.”

I stroked his fronds gently suddenly feeling like crying. I thought about Jane and how she must be coping with the results of her procedure. Jasper must have sensed my despair and let out a sound like a low moan.

I turned my attention back to the to the food processing machine. There were several ways the food processing machine could prepare pinky casserole; baked, fried, boiled, etc., but I always ate it the same way.

“Plain,” I ordered.

The machine hiss-whistled like a locomotive letting out engine steam; pinkish pudding in a white casserole dish appeared on top of the reflective surface as a fuzzy hologram and then solidified into substance.

I stared at the bubbling pink slime and realized my appetite had disappeared.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do if she dies,” I said to Jasper, my eyes tearing up. “I can’t let that happen! I just can’t!” Anger and determination surged through me. “I won’t!”

Ringing of my cell phone jarred me and I hesitated a moment before answering. A large part of my brain wanted to pretend that Jane and the procedure had never happened and if I didn’t answer maybe the results would never exist in the first place.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Bradly?” said a deep, masculine voice.

 My heart fired like a Gatlin gun. “Yes.”

“Jane Powers has your name as her contact.”

My spine stiffened. I raked my hand over my head from front to back.

“Yes.”

“She will be ready to leave the procedure center in thirty minutes.”

“Thank you, I’ll be there.”

“Mr. Bradly,” the voice continued.

“Yes.”

“Security has been informed of the impending future shown in Ms. Powers’ procedure. She could pose a city-pod risk if certain factors aren’t taken into account.”

“What factors?”

“If it is determined that she is responsible than you know what will have to be done.”

“Responsible for what?”

The connected severed.

I stood a moment before shutting off my phone, my head swimming dizzyingly, my stomach nearly retching at the idea that there was a chance security might take Jane from me even before her end time.

Feeling hours closing in like intangible, unstoppable monsters, I took a deep breath before fetching my car keys.

I ran the stairs all the way down to the lobby.

 

 

 

 

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