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What were you thinking?
Why did you let go?
I was still haunting you
What were you thinking
Why did you not know?
When I was right there with you
If you ever fall, I'll lift you up
If you lose your way, I'll lift you up
I'm in it with you
~Loreen, I'm in it With You
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Last night I dreamt of a city.
Futuristic, the kind you encounter in science fiction films and videogames, with flying cars and buildings made of glass and steel, stretching as far up as the eye could see. This city, the city in my dream, was built neatly around a sandy beach, and it was only from the coastline that I recognized Station Square. Bustling with life, buzzing with electricity. Artificial lighting peering through the windows up high -on the skyscrappers- created the impression of little halos that hanged from the night sky, replacing the stars.
Among the hordes of busybodies striding this way and that, discernible due to his odd clothing, was a man. He looked young, or rather, impeccably ageless, but the countenance he wore was so harrowing that people sidestepped to avoid him, opening up a bubble of vacant space that followed the man wherever he went. His eyes, red like blood, oscillated back and forth, observing the frantic movements of the crowd, and every now and then, he would throw his arms forward, yanking a passerby by the collar, by the hem of a coat, by a sleeve. His victims either slapped his begging hands away, or just fled.
The more people recoiled, the more desperate he became, this ageless man with the horrible look on his face. In his delirium, he kept asking the same exact question, a question nobody could help him with. And, when I walked past him, I tried to evade his clutches, but couldn't, so he grabbed my right arm and he shook me, he shook me hard, and said, Please, can you help me remember? There was someone very important, and I forgot, can you help me remember?
When I woke up, my right arm was asleep, tightly pressed against the back of the chair. My heart was hammering in my ribcage, reverberating all the way to my ears, and I immediately looked to my left, checking her bed, making sure her chest still moved up and down.
But of course, it was a laughable action, since, well, nurse, you know. It wouldn't even matter in a couple of hours.
Intermezzo
You see, nurse, in a way, I envy her. Look how beautifully she has aged- her white hairs, the veins on her delicate arms, the soft wrinkles marking everything that's ever happened to her. When she goes, I'll be helpless, but this, her life coming full circle, is the natural way of being, and, somehow, it renders her complete as an individual.
Complete. An elegant word. I once read a book where the narrator had chosen to refer to the inevitability of dying as completion. Its closing sentence stayed with me for quite some time, as did the verb. After all, we all complete. Funny, that. When Amy completes-in a matter of minutes- I will be a fragment of a person. As if I weren't a ridiculous creature to begin with.
You think ridiculous is a strong word? Well, not that it is any of your business, but when I was her age, it was just a few months after the big war- the year we got married. She was twenty-eight. That was fifty years ago, and according to mathematics, I shouldn't be here. Nobody should live that long, but me, I am a freak of nature, as though entropy hates my guts. Opening this very door yesterday, I couldn't even glance at my own reflection on the glass. An old -ancient- man wearing the flesh suit of a boy; that's pretty much as close to a walking, talking joke as it gets.
Angry? Of course I am bloody angry. I am so angry you will probably hear me punch holes through the walls on my way out of this hellhole. I am angry with myself. To my organism, this is yet another day, and tomorrow will be more of the same, eat, sleep, repeat, and it will keep going on and on, not giving a shit about her passing. It's just so illogical. How can anything go on? You hear people talk about how it's possible to die by simply giving up on your will to live. Me? Can't cut a finger if I tried.
Her expression keeps shifting. Is she in pain? No, I am not judging your work- allow me the luxury of hating you, just for today- it's just that, after two strokes, my wife's eye movements have become my area of expertise. Maybe she's trying to tell me something, just like I had so much to tell her before you barged in with your stupid needle. Fuck that needle. Fuck it to the moon and back.
I wonder if she's remembering bits of her life, like in the movies. Or if she's trying to get me to remember them. How we met, how scarred I was and how she moulded me into what I am. Her graduation- a beautiful day. Her life's work in the laboratories. Our marriage, funny, that one, because the rain had destroyed her hair on our way out of the church and she'd been sooo angry at me for laughing (I swear, she looked like a detonated walnut or something).
Perhaps Amy's thinking of our son. That's more likely. Our son. If he does age, he must look way older than me now. If he doesn't, well, one extra reason for him to despise us. And it's pretty much a given, that he despises us. It's rather complicated. We haven't seen him since he was little more than a newborn. You see, neither of us had wanted children-not me, not her- and why would we? The planet is overpopulated as it is, and given the city was in ruins -literal and financial- it seemed irresponsible to bring another soul into the world.
Except, he happened. And, as if our own soured feelings towards his unlikely existence weren't enough, we condemned him to growing up parentless.
The GUN sent our baby two hundred years into the future.
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"Fuck."
Palms pressed against her face, Amy could only see the world from the intermittent spaces between her fingers.
"Fuck." She stumbled on the edge of the living room table, hit her knee, cursed, and moved on.
"Ames, can you please stop pacing and sit down, so we can discuss this?"
I was sitting on the couch, elbows rested atop my knees. She was striding maniacally, one moment rushing to my right, the next to my left. On the carpet, discarded but hardly forgotten, was the pregnancy test.
"I doubt you'd be so calm if this thing were inside your body."
"My biology is horrific enough without the complications of a functional womb, thanks. Look, you have every right to be upset, but nothing's gonna get solved unless we maintain our composure."
She had abruptly stopped, both arms frozen mid-air, as if she were conducting an orchestra on another plane of existence. Her hair, messy after seven hours of grinding against bed pillows, covered part of her eyes and nose, and Amy had taken a strand between her lips, chewing with thoughtful aplomb. "Your biology, exactly. DNA spliced with alien genome, we're technically not even the same species. Reproduction between us should be impossible." Her eyes peered sideways, right into mine. "Why wasn't it? Impossible?"
I rose from my position and grabbed the empty cups. Amy sat on the edge of the table, hands kneaded together on her lap, her green eyes wide and quizzical as they followed me on the way to the kitchen and back. "Won't you say anything?"
"I wasn't designed to produce offspring, obviously. But that's beside the point. My main concern is, what are our options, now that it has happened?"
It was a difficult topic, a conversation we had never had -not in the formal sense, at least. Between us, there hardly ever were pitfalls to be wary of, so we spoke freely to one another, no matter how embarrassing, dangerous, or potentially explosive the subject at hand was. Our views on children and parenting were pretty much aligned, plus, my man-made roots had rendered the whole debate pretty much redundant, up until that point.
The moment she'd stumbled out of the bathroom and looked at me, I was instantly appalled. Aside from the gynaecological improbability of a female getting impregnated by an artificial lifeform, the very existence of an embryo that was part my fault left me in awe. Inside my wife, barely more than an assemblage of cells, was a blank canvas, a thousand ghosts of future people, all of which carried half of my genome and half of hers. Staring at her, sitting on that table, shellshocked, disheveled, adorable, a baby herself despite her thirty-two years, my initial terror abated. I had no control whatsoever over something that grew by feeding off her, but assuming she did want it, how bad could it be? No more than fifty percent, surely.
Βut then Amy unclenched her jaw, wiping both palms on her pajamas, and cooly stated: "I don't want it."
A thousand ghosts of future people looked at me from over her shoulder. Green-eyed, red-eyed, their fur an impressive palette, ranging from the extremely fair to pitch black. Doctors, dancers, athletes, career or family people, teachers, workers, journalists, smiling, melancholic, serious, happy-go-lucky, introverts, extroverts, heterosexual, homosexual, indoorsy and outdoorsy people. Like an assortment of Schrodinger's cats, they were simultaneously dead and alive. "So you won't think it over first? I mean, it's not like we can undo it afterwards."
"If I have it, then I'll no longer be a fighter, or a researcher. I'll be a mother, and nothing else."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that I won't be of much use for quite some time, plus, society's expectations-"
"For a woman married to a walking gun, you pay way too much attention to what people think. You'll be a mother, so what? I'll be a father. Do you find it normal that society expects me to stick to the archetypal role of the hunter-gatherer patriarch? You think that, if the child is born, I'll leave the hard work to you, grab a newspaper and pretend I am a house plant? What is this, the fifties?"
"For a walking gun, you sound too much like a thesaurus. And anyway, it's not like there has to be a precise reason why I don't want it, since, well, I don't want it. Would you like to have been born into a family that didn't want you?"
"I would like to have been born, basically. But anyway, I digress. If you feel so strongly about this matter, well, there's not much more to say, is there? We'll schedule an appointment for your operation as soon as possible." I dislike the word "abortion"; It has a somewhat guilt-tripping ring to it. "I'll come with you, unless you'd rather-"
"No, no, it's okay." She seemed absent for a second, then grimaced a little. "Please come."
I smiled. "Okay."
Amy minced her way towards me, her flip-flops making lovely scratching sounds against the carpet, her robe billowing. I opened my arms so that she could cocoon inside. Her hair smelled of wild cherries and spring; it would have been a beautiful, bittersweet moment, if not for my heightening panic. You see, when she announced her decision, I immediately thought, well, at least that leaves only one person I'll have to watch grow old and die.
I had this paranoid impression she'd heard me, because a faint touch of sadness permeated the smile she wore.
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A.N: Not dead! I decided to split my intermezzo into two parts, since this is taking forever to write. I wanted to have this as my first priority but in the meantime I became GoT and Good Omens trash, so there. Hopefully the second half will arrive within this millenium. A huge thank you to the wonderful people putting up with my chaotic evil writer shenanigans, and following this story anyway. I may never be a big fanfic writer, but I have you and feel rich for it 3