Fire and Ice

Fire and Ice

  

I remember the cold most of all. Ice cold like when I was a kid, when we had proper winters. Clear blue skies with vapour trails, breath frozen in the sunshine. Winds that scalded your face and stole your soul.  Sheer diamond topped the water troughs, my fingers delving under, numbing, as I grasped the slabs with delight, a snow house window or an ice warrior’s shield. The numbness was bearable, until my hands grew stiff and useless, then sense made me seek shelter. I’d run back inside, and be thrust down by the kitchen stove as blood, warmth and pain gradually returned to each digit. I screamed aloud as my mother made me hot chocolate and home bakes. It was heaven.

The day I arrived here I felt that again, for the first time in years. I gazed curiously at dirty snow lying by the side of the track, picked it up and pressed my fingers deep inside a ball, willing them to go numb. Willing the pain to return along with the chocolate. I turned around and gazed down at the harbour and the rust dirt ferry lying there. It would return empty, it always did. The wind scalded again, as the terns soared and cried. The waves out to sea danced in the sunshine, the land looked on in awe and helplessness, its rough shacks a dim reminder of what was once civilisation. They guarded the quayside, iron roofs tied down with chains. Broken windows boarded with old doors. Fences broken, wire torn, walls tumbling down like they cared less than I did about what was now gone.

I started up the track, inland. The other few sorry souls from the ship were already ahead of me. I was in no hurry. This was home now.

That was three years ago. Our lives are here. I met her in the lodge house that first night. I traded a quarter of tantalum for a week’s bed and a meal. I needed to start somewhere. I found a table in the corner and spent an hour shuffling cards while I tried to convince myself this wasn’t the greatest mistake I’d ever made. It felt like the ferry had dumped me a few centuries back in time, not just to the other side of the ocean. A few rough looking old guys were throwing darts on the other side of the bar. To my left, a small younger group were stuck in incessant conversation. There was no music, no screens, and no devices anywhere. I shouldn’t be surprised; this was what I had heard, though I never really believed it.

 She was the light behind the bar. My eyes kept falling upon her from the corner, no matter how the cards drew.  The hour up, I wandered towards her, I needed a drink.

“Hey, Leaver”, she greeted me.

“Is it that obvious?”

“Yes” she replied, sparkling.

 So I followed the countless Leavers who had journeyed before me, and fell instantly in love with her. Her lips were soft and spoke of freedom, her eyes shone with the hope of new life. Her voice was the sound of my future, soothing, soft and determined. Never going back.

I stayed a month. It cost me the rest of my tantalum stash, and some of my silver. It was worth it. I had walked in to that place as a Leaver with nothing, and walked out with a job fixing the G-plant, people I could trust and most of all, her.

“I don’t date Leavers”

“I’m not just a Leaver”

I lay behind her, on our first night together. The winds howled and the lodge rattled, the chains holding the roof as tight as I held her. She slept on my arm, I stroked her hair, and thanked my fortune. Awake, I stared in to the dark. The perfection of that moment, her warmth and softness allowed the lie of our freedom to prevail.

But as I stared, and as my eyes became ever more accustomed to nothing, the very faintest hint of pulsating redness grew in intensity, as did my inner pain. My hand ran down her arm, feeling the contours of defined muscles, then an almost impalpable nodule, half way down the outer side. I traced it with my fingers, and then cupped my hand over it completely. The glow vanished. I held my hand there until my arm ached in pain, denying it, willing it away and wishing I could destroy it with the power of loving touch.

“Why don’t you get rid of it”, I asked next morning.

“I know, I should”

“You don’t need it here, the rules don’t apply”, I offered.

“Technically they do”

“Who’s going to know?”

The Geothermal Plant was on the edge of town, near the Flows. They’d built it a couple of decades ago when the Government had turned off the fibre line and the nuclear station had auto-shut down. The islanders tried to restart it. The systems booted, but then aborted when the monitoring line was dead. Technically the monitoring could be done locally; there was no need for the reactor to depend on the line. It made no sense; it was a single point of failure waiting to happen. It was not designed like that by accident, it seemed. They wanted us to freeze, to die away.

I liked it by the Flows. I felt safe there. We didn’t get many drone passes these days; they didn’t care much about the island now. Maybe a few times a year they would fly over, just snooping, seeing how we were doing. But not near the Flows, they never came anywhere near here. The thermals screwed up their monitoring and sulphur fumes and electronics don’t mix too well.

“What did they have on you?” I asked.

“They had everything. Asthma risk, premature aging, short stature – what didn’t they have. I had no choice, I was glad anyway. I can’t imagine going Random, that thought terrifies me. No control, and no idea - a future unpredicted and uncontrolled. No one skips now, everyone is in the Programme.”

“Everyone?” I asked.

“Everyone I know. They risk score everything, no one gets a zero. You only get zeros with Deletion, so everyone goes in.”

“You could have refused”

“And what? Lose my living allowance? Lose my data privileges?”

It was autumn before I raised the subject again. That summer was the best I remember. The days were so long, the sun so bright. My days at the Plant were short, it was looking after itself most of the time. She left her job at the lodge. We cleared land for crops and a place to call home. We cut down trees and dug deep, building our future. I couldn’t help it though. That pulsating light deep in the night, deep in my soul, I could not escape it.

“I’m scared if I lose it”, she confided.

“Why?”

“You know I was happy. Life worked for me. My folks were the best I could have had. I had great friends, touch-friends as well. We spent the night by the lake once – for real not simulated. I studied art, I was good at it. I did synthetics and painting – the old fashioned kind with dirty brushes. My parents loved art and requested those Deletions but even so I was good, I had talent. It was my talent not just the Programme’s.

I used to think a lot as well. I thought too much, I guess. My Mum told me how it was in the old days. You know her Dad was a Random; he just came from no-where, from his Mum and Dad. That seemed crazy when I first heard about it, he could have ended up like anything. No checking, no Deletions, and he was lucky, he missed getting anything bad. Sure he got sick when he was older, sure he needed Retrogen, but he did pretty well for a Random.

That’s what got me thinking, and the more I thought, the more I was fascinated by the idea, of coming to nowhere.”

“So lose it”, I dared.

“I’m scared. They will know. They still get uploads when the drones come over. My folks will get the data feed, I know they will. If I lose my implant, it’s a violation, and then there really is no going back. No control, no monitoring. It’ll be like living in the dark ages. I so desperately want your child, you know that. What would happen, where would be the control? We don’t know the risks, we don’t know what we’d be starting. I couldn’t do that.

I have nightmares you know. I dream we have a daughter. She has long hair that looks like sunshine, and eyes that sparkle. She is our dream come true and we are then complete. But in my dream I see her getting sick and struggling. We hold her, but we can do nothing else. We have nothing here, no Meditech, no Retrogen, we would have nothing to help her. We would live every day watching her suffering and knowing our stupid selfishness made that happen.

You know I heard the stories, the networks were full of the bravado, ditch the Programme, leave, go back a hundred years. But they said 100 years ago was better, and I’m not sure that is true. The Programme is there for a reason, the Deletions work for us, they make us healthy, they let us live healthy lives.”

She told me she was going back. I was horrified. I mean no one goes back, ever. She said we should go back together. We could re-enter the Programme and start again in safety. We could always come back again later once we had a child.

I doubted that, no one went back, let alone came out the other side. Why would that be allowed?

It was winter when it happened. Ice cold again, like when I was a kid. Clear blue skies, breath frozen in the sunshine. Winds that scalded your face and stole your soul.  I packed the day-sack before we left. Some food and water, a spare jumper. Something made me slip in the razor knife. She did not notice, I did not say.

We walked up to the lava flows, we threw stones in to the fire and made wishes as we did. We talked of freedom, we talked of living and dying.

What is freedom, I asked? Is freedom the absence of harm and the absence of pain? Or is freedom the liberty to feel the pain of thawing hands – and the chance to feel the pain of living. Are we free because we are protected from harm, free because our children are healthy, because disease is gone? Or does that freedom make us prisoners?

I held her in my arms as we looked at the fires. I kissed her and told her my life was her life, her life was my life, and I wanted nothing more. I closed my eyes fearful of what I was going to do, but the hate and anger welled up inside until someone else, not me, held the knife in my hand and plunged it in to her skin.

She screamed, digging nails as my eyes begged forgiveness and hers spoke of gratitude. I delved inside her arm, my fingers grasping the implant, and then pressing it in to her hand. She held me tight, sobbing, slowing bringing her hand up in front of her, opening her blood-stained palm.

Its light pulsed red with anger.

“Are you sure?” I asked

“Sure” she whispered

She flung it in to the fires. It screamed as it landed, then went silent.

We walked away free.

(c) Jonathan Ing 2018