Authors: Carola Dibbell
ii
When I let myself in at the Farm, Rauden is lying on the sofa in front, in a bathrobe. It is a gray day and the light is funny. He just sat up fast. “What happened, I?” Man, he is looking white.
I said, “Nothing, it is all good. I just had a little time between Interviews and thought I’d come back and leave some soma.”
He just blinked. Remember he never slept? Now he sleeps too much, and when he woke up could hardly do anything.
“What Interview?” he says.
“I have an appointment. I only have time to scrape the breast.”
So he has stood up. “What Interview?”
I said, “You can’t have too much soma.”
He’s looking at me funny. He heads to the kitchen to boil a Beverage, and I go with him.
“I do not have time to scrape for endometrial product, but for soma, the breast tissue would work.”
“I, we have plenty of soma. What’s going on here?”
I didn’t say anything. I just sit down on a chair because I am still a little tired from the Harvest and running around.
“Where is this Interview?”
I said I didn’t know.
Then all at once he got very quiet.
“Where is this Interview?
”
I said I didn’t know.
There was two chairs in the kitchen, and he just sat down on the other one, hard. “Oh, my God. You’re doing the Change.”
Whatever.
“Jesus, I. What’s wrong with you?”
I said, “Oh, R, what is the big deal? The ovary is used up anyhow. I mean, take extra soma just in case, but once I stop giving eggs, it’s over.”
“I.” He is rubbing his eyes, to think.
“I!
Listen, I.” He is rubbing his whole head. Then he looks up. “What are they paying? I’ll match it. Whatever it is. I’ll pull something together. It will take a few days, but—”
“I’m not getting anything.”
So he’s blinking.
“It is for Country Day.”
“For?”
“It is the Heritage check for the new school. Otherwise, when they do the Heritage check, they’re going to notice something fishy. The really good school has SOTA systems. They are going to figure us out.”
So he is still confused.
“They are so goddamn SOTA, R. I can’t crash their system. They’re going to figure out we are gene for gene the same, but a different age. R! They are doing telomere checks.”
He really looked confused now. His eyes are going back and forth. Then he got it. “You amaze me, I,” he goes and laughs. “Look, can’t you find a different school?”
“We ran out of really good schools, R. Anyhow, the systems in the really good schools is all getting SOTA. I mean, I guess the really experimental school could be open minded and accept her as some new kind of Diversity, but then Ani has to know.”
So he is thinking hard. He almost speaks, then doesn’t. Then he does speak. “Well tell her, then, if that’s all it’s about. She’s old enough.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want her to know.”
He stops and is going to speak. Then he looks at me. “I,” he goes. “Listen to me.” Then he goes really soft, like that would help me hear,
“Listen to me.
These guys who do the Change are a whole other can of beans than me.”
I’m running out of time here. I just want him to start with the soma.
“Listen to me, I.” He grabs my wrist. “These guys don’t know what they are dealing with.”
Whatever.
“I, you have no idea what might happen.”
“R! If it doesn’t work, I will try to get it done somewhere else.”
“I! For God’s sake, I. I’m worried that it
will
work.”
I finally sit down. I’m not having an Episode or anything. I’m just tired. “R. Come on. We did enough. It’s not like we want to take over the world.”
He just sat there blinking. Then he looks up at me. “Dear God, I. What are you thinking? You think it’s about sales? I, this is not about sales.”
What I’m thinking, I will never get back to Wappingers Falls in time.
He is just going on and on and on. “I, this is risky. You have no idea. We know you are a hardy, I. But nobody ever figured out how it worked. If these bozos tweak you the wrong way, you won’t be a hardy any more. You could die.”
Like I am really going to die.
“I! For God’s sake!” He’s pulling his own hair. “This is dangerous!”
Like I never did anything dangerous before.
“Will you fucking listen to me!
We don’t even know how it’s going to affect the healing process. You’re still bleeding from the last Harvest. You want to get scraped for soma now then hop across the river and get Changed? You could have open wounds for the rest of your life.”
“So don’t scrape,” I said. I was too tired to keep arguing. “Use the old soma.”
“You’re not getting this, I.” He is almost going to cry.
“Ok, R. If you really want endometrial, go ahead. But you will have to do it yourself. Just do it fast. I would throw it in for free.”
So now he does cry. Here we go again. “You think this is all about the money! Obviously there were always ethical issues—the Life Industry is full of ethical issues, even without our contributions to the messy ethics of the goddamn thing.
“But, I. What we’re talking about now, it’s your
life.
I’m not talking about genes, or viables, or telomeres—which actually are a bit of a problem—or even the goddamn tanks we grew them in. I mean, I!” He is like, splish splash, down his face, through his beard. “How does someone get to be like you? I’m not talking about Mumbai or whatever goddamn pathogen had the misfortune to penetrate your goddamn body. I don’t mean Sealed Room goddamn tests. I mean, I! I’m talking
personally
here. The things that you survived—dear God, you were just a child! And OF COURSE I KNOW ABOUT THE CURES.” He’s crying so hard he starts to wheeze. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
I didn’t say that.
“You’re not stupid, yourself. How else did you manage to stay alive with what you’ve been through? Some New Life idiot hacks your reproductive system to shreds, and what were you, sixteen?”
Fifteen.
“And then, after all that—dear God!” He’s mopping his cheeks with his bathrobe collar. “You still like to see what happens.
“What I’m saying is, if there are others remotely like you,” he’s wringing the collar with his hands, “bring ’em on! But—well, I’m hardly a world traveler,” he’s wiping his hands on the robe, “but,” he has to stop and wheeze before he finished, “you’re certainly the only one like you I’ve seen. You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met!”
Then he goes out of the room and I’m just like, what is this?
When he comes back he’s wearing regular clothes and looks pretty clean. I guess he wiped himself off. He looks me in the eye and says, “I might be a little out of my depth here, and ethically, I have my limits. But, I—if you end up dying just so Ani gets into the right school, that would seem a bit unethical, even for me.”
So, maybe more of Rini rubbed off on me than I knew, as environmental factor. When Rauden put it that way, I changed my mind.
Maybe I
am
a bad mother. I mean, nobody’s that good a mother if they’re dead. But even if they are, as far as who had a life, Ani wasn’t the only one. I had a life too.
All I’m saying is, I changed my mind, and ok, if I had character, maybe I would not change my mind. Or maybe I would. I’m not exactly the world expert, what is character. All I’m saying is, if I did the Change and lost the hardy genes, when the next Epi came, who knows? I could of got sick and died. The viables that are in the freezers would still be born, because they are already made, but let’s just say I ever wanted to find those viables and tell them what happened. Who I am or who they are. If I did the Change and died, I never would.
Maybe they don’t care. Or maybe they rather not know. All I’m saying is, I have a life too. I have a Heritage too. I want someone to know what it is.
I really felt different after Rauden said what he said. I felt so different I just wanted to take a walk outside. I don’t know why! But it’s cold and he’s already shivering, so I just took a walk inside. I walked to the back of the Quonset. Rauden walked with me, wheezing, till I said, “R? Remember when you first did the work with my product, you used to run conventional IVF with my eggs and sperm from Sylvain’s hardy, just to see what happened? Did you ever do it with, you know, yours?”
He didn’t say anything. He just looked down at his socks.
“You never did it, right?”
He just looks at his socks, in the sandals.
“R. Come on. What? I could handle this.”
He just says, “It didn’t work.”
So when I heard that—because it meant he wanted it to work—I don’t know how to explain this. It’s like, inside my head is the sound the MagLev track makes? Hum!
All this time, we are both walking. It is a little stupid. But we are just walking the Quonset, back and forth. By now we reached the green light hoo-ha and turned to walk up front.
“When?” I said.
“A few times.”
“More than once?” Come on, I. Hello? That is what a few times means. Hum! “When was the first?”
“After the Buffalo series, when you went to Queens and declined to come back and do the work.” He is hanging his head.
That far back! Hum! “You mixed my egg and your sperm, in a dish?”
He is whispering, “It didn’t work.”
We’re at the front and are turning around to walk to the back again. “And were there other times? Other times you tried?”
So he is stopping to check a doorknob. Like that is so important. “I also did it after you had the Episode. From the Harvest after the birthday party.”
“The tenth birthday? But, R. There was only four eggs,” I said. “You used up one of four?”
“Two.” Oh, boy, he’s smiling now.
“You used up half the Harvest?
”
“It didn’t work.” So he is almost giggling now.
I am like, oh! Didn’t work! Tell me something I
don’t
know. I was like, you used up half the Harvest? You knew it isn’t going to work!
Then I guess I was laughing too. I thought it was pretty funny too.
I said, “And were there others you tried with? I mean other eggs from other Subjects, that you mixed with your sperm in a dish?”
He shook his head and smiled. “No, you’re the only one.”
“I guess no one had product as hardy as me.”
So then he says, “It wasn’t a hardy thing at all. I just liked doing it.” Then he smiles again. “I missed you.”
So when he said that, it is not even a MagLev track thing, it is like one of those antigravitational devices, next thing you know, it’s going to push me to a tree, like Migan.
“I did use other male solos with other eggs of yours, from Sylvain’s collection,” he said, “but that never worked. I didn’t use Henry’s though. You probably wish I used Henry’s. It might have worked with his.”
I said, “You are the only one I would of wanted it to work with.”
And to tell the truth, until I said it, I didn’t even know that it was true.
“Show me how to do it, R. Come on. How much harder could it be than nuclear Transfer? I could do it right now, if you want to teach me,” I said. “If you have any more sperm on ice.”
He looks like he is near some antigravitational device, himself. “I might. Or I might be able to,” he coughed, “produce some.”
Remember airborne pathogen? We are like that. Remember hit the roof? At least the roof is there to stop us, if we are airborne now. We’re like the goddamn MagLev, we do not touch ground.
So he is checking out the freezers when I notice for the first time that a message came to my Reader. Who knows when it came? I didn’t check in all this time at the Farm.
It is some kind of hospital in the Bronx, and it sounds like they have Ani. Then they are breaking up.
Rauden is saying, what, and I tell him. So we’re just standing there.
He says, what hospital.
I don’t even know. I can’t get through.
So we’re just standing there. He says there could be Signal up the hill, where the corn grows in summer. We both are running up the hill, near the frozen corn fields, and try again. It doesn’t work.
It is so cold up here, Rauden has a hard time breathing. “They did say she is still alive?”
I forgot to ask.
So we went further uphill to the top, where there is some kind of backup generator gizmo, and I get Signal. “Ask them.” He is wheezing.
I ask them, “Is she still alive?”
It’s hard to hear but sounds like she’s still alive. I tell Rauden, “She’s still alive.”
So that’s it for the IVF with Rauden’s sperm.
We’re already running back down for the truck. We just race all the way to the bridge. I don’t even remember to tell him I’ll be back to do the IVF. I don’t even think about it till Yonkers.
I thought about it then. To tell the truth, I think about it now.
Then I forgot while I was running around the Bronx City Line, chasing down a shaw.
Then I’m in the hospital, trying to prove I’m Ani’s Guardian. They won’t even tell me if she’s still alive before I prove it. They got some fancy ID filter I never saw before, and the Guardian part on my ID is not coming through. They won’t even inform me, before the Guardian thing clears, she tried to jump off a bridge. I can’t even follow this. On Monday morning, the Armory van broke down right on the bridge. She climbed out a window and tried to jump over the side.
By the way, she is expelled from Armory Prep. She is a danger to herself or others. I can’t even see her till morning. They let me sleep on a chair out in the public room.
When I finally get into her room, she is out cold. They gave her a shot. They won’t even tell me what it was. They are going to keep her one more day for Observation. So I go outside to call Rauden. But I can’t get through.
When I’m back in the hospital, the Supervisor who cleared my Guardian thing went off shift. The new one has to start from scratch. Am I the Guardian? Am I myself? Am I qualified to make sure Ani is not a danger to herself?
When they finally let me take her, I’m so glad to see her awake, I’m almost jumping, but, I don’t know if it’s the drug or what, she just looks away. She will not talk the whole way home. And it is a long, long way. It is the usual problem of transportation in the Bronx, and some kind of ash is blowing in some kind of wind. The whole trip I am like, is she going to be a danger to herself? Is she going to jump off something? And all this time she doesn’t say word one. I am almost falling asleep on my feet but I keep myself awake. I don’t even let go of her hand. I try to keep myself awake by blabbing this, that. What kind of Process does she want for dinner? She doesn’t say anything.