Authors: Mark Souza
“It’s illegal,” she said. “Blocking violates the Right to Commerce Act.”
“So what, are you going to report me?”
“No, but you might want to pull the blinds.”
Moyer gazed out the window into the apartments in the next building. Most were lit. The neighbor directly across from them sat in a reclining chair staring back at Moyer, his expression blissful, eyes glazed and blank. Robyn referred to him as Mr. Perv for habitually walking around nude and never pulling his blinds. Moyer recognized the look. Mr. Perv was surfing, the signal from eyes to brain overridden by images downloaded directly off the net into his head. Moyer slid the blinds closed. The fine for blocking was too stiff to take chances that Mr. Perv wouldn’t come to awareness long enough to report Moyer for a split of the fine.
When he glanced back at the sofa, Robyn’s eyes had the same far-away cast. Her mouth hung open and she cooed. “Aaaah, cute.”
“What are you watching?”
“An ad. Hogan-Perko has a Christmas sale coming up. Fifty percent off. The price doesn’t get any better than that. Can we?”
Moyer sighed. “Does that mean we can take a pass on the Deep Seas Initiative?”
Robyn’s eyes snapped back into focus, green and determined. “No.”
“What’s the sale price?
“Sixty thousand credits.”
“We have less than half that saved, and it took us four years. If the price doesn’t go up, we might be able to swing it in another six years.”
“I’ll be thirty-two by then, and there’s an ‘
if’
attached,” Robyn said. “You don’t want a baby, do you? That’s what this is about.”
Moyer stammered, “Th-th-that’s not true, and you know it. We don’t have the money.”
“Petro and Kelsey have a baby. They’re our age and he works in your department. How come they can afford it and we can’t?”
“I don’t know. Maybe…” Moyer stopped himself.
“Maybe what?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“No! What were you going to say?”
“I-I-I … I was going to suggest that maybe they were more dedicated.” Moyer went to the credenza and pulled an envelope from the drawer. He withdrew the sheets inside and unfolded them. “Look at this. This month’s NNI bill is almost two thousand credits. What have you been doing?”
Robyn stood peering over her husband’s shoulder. “That has to be a mistake.”
“It’s no mistake.” Moyer thumbed through the pages. “Hogan-Perko, Hogan-Perko, Hogan-Perko, two hours, six, three, three, eleven. Eleven hours at one sitting, how is that possible?”
“You don't understand what it's like doing physical labor. I have to do something to keep my mind occupied.”
Robyn traced her finger down the page. He knew she was hoping to find a single significant charge attributable to him, something she could defend herself with. There was nothing, a couple of short links to Petro, a few minutes of ESPN.
“This is the reason why we can’t afford a baby,” he said. “Hell, at this rate we can’t even afford to daydream about one. The more you do this, the further away we get. I would pull the net-link chip out of your head if I could. This is killing us. How are we going to pay this?”
Robyn’s finger stopped at one entry. “We got a reimbursement of twelve hundred credits on your birthday.”
“What?”
“Your birthday? You remember your birthday gift, right?” Robyn said with a coy smile, hips swaying in a suggestive hoochie-coo. “I don’t think you turned up the music loud enough, honey. We had over forty thousand hits.”
Moyer did recall. One of the negatives of the net was that every second of his life was accessible content to anyone who wanted to tune in. It was the same for everyone. With few exceptions, everyone was connected by the net-link chip. But the gate swung both ways. With twenty billion people, there was simply too much content. No one wanted to pay to watch someone doing dishes. People wanted entertainment. So there was a degree of privacy in the mundane. NNI responded with audio filters to hone in on events that might pique audience interest; sirens, shouts and screams, explosions, and sex. Sex was still king on the net, accounting for the lion’s share of profits. To encourage marketable content, NNI split profits proportional to audience size for those that attracted viewers. Robyn had indeed made his birthday special. Ordinarily, loud music and static interfered with the browser filters. Perhaps due to Robyn’s exuberance that night, the music hadn’t been enough.
“If forty thousand tuned in for that,” Robyn said, “imagine the share we might attract if we were more… exotic.”
Moyer shook his head. “N-n-no, no, no, I don’t want to wonder if someone at work is eyeing me strangely because they caught the show the night before. And heaven help us if your folks are watching. Your father already hates me.”
“Dad doesn’t hate you,” she said.
Moyer glowered.
“Okay, maybe he does, but we could raise the money we need in a few months. Please?”
“I said no.”
“We could wear masks,” Robyn begged. “No one would have to know.”
“No! If you cut back on the net, we could have a baby in a few years.” Moyer placed the bill back into the drawer. “Do you really want to know what happened to me today?”
Robyn’s posture grew more defiant. She clearly didn’t want to play twenty questions.
“I went to lunch with Petro. When the bill came, I was declined. Do you know why? Because you spent our last sixty credits on the lottery. I had to borrow. D-d-do you know how that felt? D-did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I don’t want to wait for a baby? Everything with you is years away.”
“If we can’t pay our bills, it’s p-p-prison for me. What then?”
“We aren’t in that bad of shape,” she said. “Besides, it was a freak week. There were thirty one hundred deaths last week. You can check the incinerator logs yourself. There hasn’t been a weekly death toll that high in nine years. They raised the prize pool by five hundred babies this week. When will that happen again? So of course I bought tickets. I’d be a fool not to.”
Moyer raised his eyes to the ceiling for a moment. “Robyn, the lottery is a sucker’s bet. It was meant for laborers. Do you realize that Hogan-Perko makes more money on lottery babies than they do from normal sales? That’s because the odds are so long you wind up spending twice as much on lotto tickets trying to get a baby than if you saved the money.”
Robyn balled her fists so tightly her arms trembled. Moyer braced for the onslaught. Instead, Robyn stormed into the bedroom, blond hair bobbing in time with her gait, and slammed the door behind her.
Moyer slumped onto the sofa and put the mesh cap back on his head. He returned to his book but couldn’t concentrate. He glanced at the closed bedroom door. Of one thing he was sure. For tonight at least, audience share would not be a problem.
Robyn emerged from the bedroom a few minutes later. She had changed clothes as if she had plans to go out. Tension pressed the blood from her lips and her jaw muscles strummed beneath her skin. “Are you ready?”
The question seemed to come from nowhere. Moyer struggled for a frame of reference and came up blank. “Ready for what?”
“Testing,” she said. “The DeepSeas Initiative?”
Moyer closed his eyes and shook his head. He’d forgotten. “Can we…” Robyn glared at him and Moyer stopped mid-sentence. He swiped the gold mesh cap from his head and stood to get his coat.
Moyer shivered as he waited in line stripped down to his underwear. His teeth chattered as much from nerves as from the cold. Two lines stretched down a long, narrow hallway, women on one side, men on the other. Robyn was beside him. It made Moyer feel better that she was nervous too. The serpentine line had originated in a large gymnasium. It took an hour for Moyer and Robyn to reach the hallway. He was shocked by the number of people who showed up. Every five minutes or so, the lines advanced twenty places, first the women’s line, then the men’s.
While he waited, he compared himself to those around him. His father once told him the measure of a man wasn’t the strength of his muscles, but the strength of his will. Though appearance was not the sole determinant of what a man was capable of, Moyer knew he wouldn’t fare well when compared to those in line with him. Most were more athletic, thicker of limb, more self assured. He wondered again what he was doing there.
He glanced at Robyn, single-minded, driven, relentless. She stood a better chance. But of all those tested that day, Moyer knew only a half dozen or so would be selected and he and Robyn wouldn’t be among them.
A long window near the door on the women’s side of the hallway overlooked two rows of steel tanks filled with water. Submerged inside each was a man, motionless as a mannequin while the seconds counted off on digital displays on the wall. It was like watching popcorn sizzle through a glass lid and trying to predict which would pop first. The spectacle might have been entertaining without the dread of knowing it would soon be his turn.
Shortly after the timer hit three minutes, the first head popped above the water gasping for air. The man’s posture sagged when he checked the tanks around him and saw they were still occupied. Over the next minute, head after head emerged until it was down to two. At the five minute mark, only one remained. Those who had given up stayed, mere spectators, shaking their heads in disbelief as the seconds ticked by. The last subject broke the surface at six minutes, four seconds, looking close to death, face a sickly purple, too weak to stand or exit the tank without assistance. That was the benchmark. That was what one had to do for a free baby. Moyer quaked with nerves.
The women’s line advanced as the next twenty went through the door and down the stairs to take positions inside the tanks, and Robyn went with them. Moyer watched the spectacle through the window. At the sound of a horn they went under in unison clutching handles on the sides of the tanks to help them remain submerged. The water grew still above them. It was the oddest still life Moyer had ever seen, an eerie dreamscape, the kind that jerked dreamers from their sleep and left them disturbed all day.
Other than shifting numbers on the timer, there was no sense of movement or progression. Then at a minute-forty, the first woman broke the surface and exited her tank clearly upset. A few seconds later, another. But Robyn remained frozen, her hair flowing out weightless like the tentacles of a jellyfish. Two minutes passed, then three. It was down to six and Robyn hadn’t moved. She looked as if she might be dead or sleeping. Moyer wondered how near death his wife would come to get a child. By the 3:30 mark, three more had given up. And at three minutes, forty-two seconds, Robyn burst from her tank choking and sputtering. She swiped at her face to clear wet hair from her eyes. When she saw two women still submerged, she angrily slapped her hand against the surface of the water and crawled out. An attendant offered her a towel. Robyn snatched it from her hand and walked away grumbling.
After the last of the women had been ushered from the tanks, Moyer moved with the line down the stairs. His knees knocked and hands shook as if he was freezing, though it was quite warm in the test chamber. Moyer avoided eye contact as he crawled into the tank. The cool water raised goose bumps along his flesh. He concentrated on his breathing to get as much oxygen into his system as he could. Others did the same and sounded like compressor pistons as they cycled air in and out. The horn sounded far sooner than Moyer anticipated and he fumbled for the handles as he submerged.
It was peaceful underwater. To Moyer it was an ideal world; no net, no noise, just the tranquil rhythm of his heartbeat. It had been a long time since he’d been completely submerged, since before the implementation of water rationing. He’d almost forgotten the sensation and how much he enjoyed it.
Above, the glowing red numbers on the digital clock were visible when Moyer was still enough to quell the surface. He considered whether it was better to close his eyes or watch the clock. He grew anxious tracking the seconds. Time passed so slowly. He squeezed his eyes shut and let his mind wander to draw his attention off the fire growing in his lungs.
Hundreds of couples had come in to be tested at this birthing center alone. Moyer wondered what the total was; would it crest ten thousand test subjects? One hundred thousand? Again numbers were making him anxious. He tried clearing his mind.
He imagined he was an explorer under the ocean, as he had as a child in the tub before water rations made tub baths impossible. He’d never seen the ocean other than as images on the net. The nearest saltwater was the Chesapeake Crater where the old capital used to stand, prior to the Sino War. Though only a few hundred kilometers away, he’d never managed to make the trip. It was said that from the shore, the curvature of the Earth was visible on the horizon. Moyer reckoned that would be something to see.
The water temperature inside the tank had become more comfortable than when he first climbed in. In fact it was a little warm. The burn in his chest grew more intense. His heart beat faster. It was, he supposed, a natural response to the lack of oxygen.
His lungs ached hot and dry. The air restrained inside them seemed to be expanding, the pressure building. It was growing unbearable. He blew out a stream of bubbles to relieve the strain and heard them perk at the surface. The pressure inside him subsided and for a moment he felt relieved. Then it was as though his lungs had become a vacuum. The burning intensified and Moyer realized he had made a mistake. He closed his eyes and tried to think of something else – anything else. The pain swelled. His heart hammered hard and fast in his ears and rocked his ribcage. It was a race between his heart and lungs as to which would explode first. His father’s words rang in his head;
the measure of a man is his strength of will.
He gripped the handles tighter and tried to press past the pain. Will power was the key. Will power, will power, will power. It was hopeless.
Moyer shot to the surface and gulped in a breath. Water went down the wrong tube. He choked and gagged. He grew light-headed and for a moment was sure he’d pass out. He noticed the timer on the wall stopped at forty-six seconds. All the others were still running. He gazed at the tanks, their surfaces still, each containing a man curled under the surface like a giant fetus. He glanced up and spotted Robyn watching through the observation deck window, her mouth open in an expression of horror.