The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Anna turned away from her terminal and covered her mouth, coughing until her lungs ached. When she was finally done, she groaned, sniffed, then twisted off the cap of her cold medicine and took a long sip.

"Still sick, huh?" Yasmine asked from across the office. "That cough hasn't gotten any better."

"Uh-huh," Anna cleared her throat, wincing from the pain in her lungs. "You're telling me."

"You'd think Shang would at least give you a few days off to get better."

"Sick days aren't a thing for us interns. God forbid the corpos from letting the working-class have more than one day off a year. I already used mine."

A few days had passed since all the excitement, and with the heat that had been attracted to Anna and Elsa, it was important for them to lay low. For Anna, that meant putting up with putting in continual appearances at ACN, maintaining her guise of a normal, everyday, working-class civilian. That being said, now that she and Elsa were on the same page with everything, she found her work to be even more unfulfilling and unrewarding than ever before. So much so that she was now seriously questioning why she was still bothering with it at all.

Worse still were the symptoms of Anna's apparent cold which had not improved from when they plateaued. Generally, they were manageable and the only time they were really a concern was when she pushed herself too hard through physical exertion. Now, they were only steadily growing worse. The aches and pains left her weaker, and the coughing left her shorter of breath. Perhaps it was a good thing that she had been staying longer at work the past few days if only to hide the development of her illness from Elsa.

"Hey, Yasmine?" Anna started. "You ever think why we're doing this?"

"Why we're doing what?" Yasmine replied.

"This," Anna gestured vaguely around herself. "Working at this dump. Getting paid in peanuts when the whole world is supposed to be ending soon."

Tensions between the Americans and the Arcadians hadn't eased off. Every day, more warships were moved into defensive positions. So far, nobody had fired the first shot yet. At this point, news coverage of the event had mostly dried up, given that nothing terribly exciting had occurred in the last few weeks. International politics was an infamously slow process. Interplanetary politics was glacial in comparison when factoring in travel times across space.

Still, the doomsday clock remained stuck at seven minutes to midnight, a constant reminder of the danger that loomed over everyone. Most people hadn't forgotten already, but some were already eager to get on their lives and return to some sense of normality.

Yasmine considered Anna's question for a moment then shrugged. "End of the world or not, we still gotta pay the bills," she said. "Just because we all might die doesn't mean the crunch stops. Not for regular folks like us."

"But that's so fucked up. Why are we working just to keep the corpos nice and cushy while we can barely afford to buy the shit they're selling us? What's the point if we're all dying anyway?"

"If it bothers you so much, just quit. Plenty of people dying to get into a job like ours."

"They wouldn't even care if one of us just died in the office, would they?"

"Are you kidding? Last week, Tom from accounting died working at his desk and by the end of lunch, they had some new schmuck working there. Where were you?"

I was doing some stuff with Elsa, Anna thought. Really important stuff.

"Anyway, we just gotta do what we gotta do," Yasmine said. "Can't strike, not since they busted up the union."

"And by busted up, you mean some corpo spooks sent them off to a 'company retreat' where they disappeared."

"Shh, quiet down! You think I don't know that? Keep talking about stuff like that and you'll wind up in a gulag like them."

"Hmph," Anna made her choice and stood up from her desk. "I'm gonna do it."

"Do what now?" Yasmine asked.

"I'm gonna quit. I'm gonna walk into Shang's office and tell that smug asshole to go eat a bag of dicks."

"Really?"

"A whole bag!" Anna started walking out.

She made her way through the bullpen, passing by rows and rows of cubicles filled with journalists and other staff members. After rounding a corner, heading through the break room, past the meeting rooms, Anna eventually found Shang's office situated in a cozy corner.

Anna knocked on the door three times. "Shang, it's Rachael, we need to talk."

"Can it wait?" Shang replied through the door. "Kind of in the middle of something important here."

Porn was heard playing on the other side of the door.

"Unbelievable," Anna muttered to herself as she opened the door and walked in. "I'm not coming back after you're done, we need to talk right now," she crossed her arms.

Shang paused the porn on his holo-display and then instead of pulling up his trousers like Anna was expecting, he actually removed them completely as a manic grin crossed his face. Next, he swept all the pens, pencils, datapads, and other items off his desk as he hopped up and sat on it.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Anna asked, flabbergasted. "Put that thing away, this is-"

"This is finally happening," Shang pointed to the door. "Close that and lock it. I've got a few minutes, let's get this going."

"Dude, I'm not here to-"

"Come on, Raquel, don't pretend like you don't like what you see."

Anna groaned and rubbed her eyes. "I'm quitting, that's what I came here to tell you."

"Huh?" Shang raised an eyebrow. "Quitting? You can't just come in here and tell me you're quitting."

"The hell I can. I'm quitting. You're a perv and I hate you."

"Did you forget you signed a contract?" Shang finally started pulling up his trousers. "ACN owns you and there's no union to protect you."

"And did you forget that contract was only for an internship of one year?" Anna pointed at him. "You haven't renewed it yet, probably because you know you'd have to hire me full-time and you don't want to do that, and probably because ACN doesn't want to pay out the pathetic employee benefits that I should be getting by now. I can walk out of here anytime I want."

"So what? You think you can catch me with my pants down, blackmail me, bribe me, play hardball because you think I'll hire you for a staff job now? Or give you a promotion? You think you got me by the balls? Think again, bitch."

Anna tossed her hands up in frustration. "Ugh, I told you, I'm fucking quitting," she gave him the middle finger on both hands. "I just came here to tell you to go eat an entire bag of dicks," she turned around and walked out, still flipping him the bird. "See ya never, dickmuncher!"

"Eat a dick, I'll show you how to eat a dick!" Shang stormed after her but didn't leave his office. "Wait, that came out wrong, but- agh, fuck it. Get lost then, you stuck up, ginger cunt! Clear out your shit and get out of this building!"

Anna smirked triumphantly as she returned to her shared office space. Once there, Yasmine and few other interns have evidently heard all the commotion and were staring at her in wonder.

"I can't believe you actually did that," Yasmine said. "You told him to eat a bag of dicks."

Anna laughed and nodded. "Yeah, I did do that," she gathered her things. "And it felt awesome."

"What are you gonna do now?"

Anna gritted her teeth and clutched her abdomen from a spike of pain that flared up, then pushed past it. "Right now, I'm gonna go and get lunch," she pulled on her coat. "Wanna come with? I'm buying. Whatever you want."

"You know what, I will come with you," Yasmine said, getting up from her desk. "My lunch break is coming up anyway. I know this great shawarma place not far from here, let's go there."

"Well, come on then, girl," Anna started heading out. "Let's take a trip to flavor town."

… … …

"So, what did his face look like when you told him that?" Yasmine asked, sipping her mango Pep-Up soda.

They were both sitting at a table beneath an umbrella on a sunny sidewalk by corpo plaza. Around them, civilians were carrying about their own days, walking along or lounging about.

Anna took a bite of her synth-chicken shawarma wrap and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Oh, you know. Surprised, offended, confused, maybe even slightly turned on," she said. "Well, he was already turned on because his, you know, dick was out by the time I got there. But I bet nobody's ever talked to him like that before. Maybe I awakened something in him."

"Well, yeah, that's how these corpo types are. They think they're hot shit, on top of the world, untouchable, can sexually harass the female staff all the time, and get away with it. That's just the usual biz these days."

"It's fucked up."

"It's a fucked up world, filled with fucked up people and fucked up things. That's the way it's always been. That's the way it's always gonna be."

"Yasmine, you are kind of a downer, aren't you?" Anna chuckled, coughing a little bit.

"I'm just being realistic," Yasmine took a bite of her synth-beef shawarma. "You moved from New York, right? Were things any less fucked up there?"

Anna cleared her throat and shook her head, taking a sip of her own grape Pep-Up to try and wash down the coughs. "No, it was worse and I'm glad I got away, but still," she sighed. "I sometimes wonder if this really is the best place to live. I mean, I'm not even a citizen yet. I'm still a permanent resident."

"I just got my citizenship," Yasmine replied, placing her chin on her palm and looking into the distance whimsically. "But then again, it does take longer for you Americans to get it than the rest of us."

I knew I should have had Mulan forge new passports for us, Anna thought, frowning. We could have been Norwegian or Swedish. We have the complexion for it. But no, Anna, you just had to pick the nice apartment in Little Japan, and you just had to have that motorcycle.

Setting up new lives and new identities hadn't been cheap and it took nearly all of the savings that Anna had accumulated. Forging completely different passports was an entirely different matter, one that was prohibitively expensive just like many other things in the twenty-second century.

At the time, it seemed like a tiny oversight that wouldn't be all that serious to deal with. Of course, that was two years ago.

"What are the perks from that, aside from being a full, red-blooded, born-again communist?" Anna asked.

"Access to universal healthcare is pretty nice, plus partial coverage for cyberware," Yasmine said. "Otherwise, you gotta pay for everything."

"Yeah, what do you think I've been doing ever since I got here?" Anna covered her mouth with her elbow and coughed. "Corps control everything. That's the one thing that stays the same no matter where you go. These cough meds barely work, and they cost me fifty credits for a single bottle," she started to cough more severely.

Yasmine furrowed her brows in concern. "Speaking of coughing, are you okay?"

Anna turned away from Yasmine, leaning over and coughing until she started to wheeze. She clutched her chest as her lungs felt like they were starting to burn, while every single movement of her body caused lances of pain in her abdomen.

"Rachael, hey, you don't look so good," Yasmine stood up and held Anna by her shoulder. "Drink something, here, take a sip of this," she held out the can of soda.

Anna tried to reach for it, then doubled over in so much pain that she fell to her knees, hacking and coughing hoarsely the entire time. Her head was swimming with nausea and her vision was darkening around the edges, beginning to blur. She was coughing so much that she found it hard to draw in a single breath, for her throat was scraped raw and her lungs were now on fire. When she coughed into her hand, she spat up some red fluid.

"Uh oh," Anna muttered as she saw that her hand had been misted with droplets of blood. "That's not good."

Yasmine knelt by Anna's side, trying to pull her to her feet. "Rachael? Rachael! Shit, you're in a bad way," she said, though her voice was sounding more and more distant by the second. "We need to get you to a hospital," she looked up to a few curious passersby. "Excuse me? Excuse me, can you help?"

Anna tried to say something, likely to refuse to be taken to the hospital when they had just talked about how she didn't have healthcare coverage, but she only managed to wheeze.

Another second later and she passed out on the sidewalk.

… … …

An hour later, Anna awoke alone on a hospital bed. She looked around in a daze, everything looking and feeling fuzzy to her as she rubbed her eyes and groaned. The awful realization settled over her that this was not the first time she had been in a situation like this.

"Oh, god," Anna patted her chest, still feeling prickly spikes inside of her lungs. "I don't feel so good."

Her bed was enclosed in a small space, shielded by a privacy screen. Just beyond it, she heard other patients moaning, groaning, coughing, and wheezing, so she knew she was within a larger care unit. Hushed voices were heard speaking here and there, but Anna was still alone.

"Hello?" Anna pushed herself up to a sitting position slowly, wincing from the pain. "Hello? Anyone?"

Not long after, an android nurse pushed aside the privacy screen, holding a datapad. "You are awake. You are Miss Rachael Deckard, yes?" she asked. "Do you know where you are?"

Anna swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded. "Yeah, that's me," she said. "And I'm guessing I'm in a hospital."

"Correct. You are at Saint Seraphim Medical Center. How are you feeling?"

"Awful. I'm in a lot of pain."

"Can you indicate where you are feeling pain? And how severe it is?"

"My chest and my stomach area, my abdomen, whatever. I guess out of ten, I'd have to say a solid eleven."

"And how long have you been feeling pain in these areas?"

"Almost a month now. Maybe a little longer than that."

"I see," the android nurse made a few notes on the datapad. "When you arrived here, we performed a bioscan of your body to ensure that you weren't carrying any infectious diseases or viruses."

"And?" Anna asked.

"Nothing alarming."

"But? I'm sensing a but."

The android nurse studied Anna for several moments, then gestured to a nearby wheelchair. "Perhaps you will want to speak to Doctor Maharaj, the primary care physician for this wing," she said. "Would you allow me to escort you to his office?"

"Sure," Anna nodded, swinging her legs off the bed.

After being assisted into the wheelchair, the android nurse wheeled Anna along through the hospital wing, passing by the other patients who were suffering varying levels of pain.

"Hey, there was a woman with me," Anna started. "She was probably the one who brought me here, what happened to her?"

"She stayed for as long as she could, but informed us that she had to return to work," the android nurse replied. "She asked us to send you her well wishes."

"Huh, can't blame her for that," Anna muttered quietly to herself. "Thanks, Yasmine."

As she continued to be wheeled along, Anna brought up her omni-pad, finding that she had a missed call from Elsa as well as a few messages. Elsa knew that Anna was at ACN, so there wasn't any immediate fear of danger from her end, so she was likely just checking in. Not wanting to leave her in the dark, but not wanting her to worry either, Anna prepared a quick response.

Me: Hey, baby, I had some stuff going on at work. I just saw this. Everything okay on your end?

Ice Queen of my Heart: I'm fine, I just wanted to see how you were doing. Work is busy, I imagine?

Me: Well, it's kind of a funny story actually. I'll call you and tell you about it as soon as I'm done.

Ice Queen of my Heart: Okay, sweetie! I just wanted to see how you were doing. OLAF and I are almost done with everything on our end. Also, I think it would be good to sleep in the apartment tonight. I've been going a little stir crazy here at the safehouse.

Me: That's a good idea. No offense, but your bed at the safehouse is too soft for me. I'll see you at home. Love you.

Ice Queen of my Heart: Love you more!

After Anna closed out the messaging display, she buried her face in her hands and groaned. Whatever was wrong with her body, it was certainly serious.

When they eventually arrived at Doctor Maharaj's office, the android nurse parked Anna in line next to a queue of other patients. There, she would have to wait until it was her turn for a consultation. To pass the time, Anna surfed the net on her omni-pad, looking at funny pictures of cats to try and distract herself from the fact that she was very likely going to receive some bad news. In the office, she could also year quiet sniffling and sobbing, another thing she valiantly tried to ignore.

After two hours, the last patient before Anna finished their consultation with Doctor Maharaj and exited the office, limping on a pair of crutches. Anna was spinning around in a circle in her wheelchair when her name was called up next.

"Miss Deckard?" Maharaj approached Anna. "Sorry for the wait. Let me wheel you in?"

"Okey-doke, doc," Anna agreed.

Maharaj was a kind-looking man with a head of gray hair, a wispy gray mustache, and wrinkled eyes that suggested he smiled a lot. However, it could have also suggested he was used to a career of delivering bad news. When they were situated inside his office, he parked Anna in front of his desk, closed the door, then took his own seat.

"So, Miss Deckard," Maharaj leaned forward. "How are you feeling?"

"Pain, I feel pain," Anna said. "Shouldn't your nurse have told you that?"

"She did, she did. I just like to check in myself, see how my patients are doing."

"Uh-huh. So, tell it to me straight, doc, will I ever be able to play lacrosse again?"

Maharaj chuckled and smiled. "Good, good, you have a sense of humor. That's good to see," his smile faded. "When was your last checkup?

Well, there was that time two years ago when Elsa took care of me at Gjallarbrú, Anna thought. But maybe I shouldn't talk about that.

"For blood work, cholesterol tests, screenings for uterine health, anything like that," Maharaj continued.

"Well," Anna leaned back in the wheelchair and sighed. "I won't lie to you, pretty much never. I was vaccinated for all the usual stuff when they took me into the orphanage in New York, but other than that, nothing. Unless you count visits to a tech-doc to get cyberware done."

Maharaj shook his head as he brought up a holo-display and frowned at it. "Tech-doc visits for cyberware don't count," he said. "You said you were vaccinated? When?"

"When I was, uh, when I was twelve."

"Odd. It isn't showing up on your file."

Anna tensed up slightly, feeling that Maharaj may catch on to something.

"Hmm," Maharaj shrugged. "Probably just some clerical error. That tends to happen with immigrants from the former United States. Healthcare records, financial history, that stuff always gets mixed up."

"Right, yeah," Anna said quickly. "Yeah, that's always- yeah."

Maharaj closed out the display then looked back at Anna. "Miss Deckard, given what you just told me and given the most recent bioscan we took of you when you arrived, I'm afraid the news isn't good."

"I figured that."

"It's cancer."

"What?" Anna straightened up in her chair, eyes turning wide from shock. "Just hold on a- wait, you said cancer?"

"Yes, and I'm sorry to tell you," Maharaj brought up a new holo-display showing the bioscan of Anna's body, with additional ones taken of her torso. "There. In your liver, where it originated and metastasized, and your lungs, where it spread to."

Anna stared at the images as her mind was sent into a tailspin, reeling from the gravity of the diagnosis. Her entire body was tensed up and her breathing was shallow and rapid. She couldn't think of anything to say, so she stared, completely dumbfounded at her organs which had apparently betrayed her.

"And at the rate that it's continuing to spread, your case is terminal," Maharaj looked down at his hands.

"No, no, you got it wrong, there must be a mistake. I- I- I don't understand," Anna stammered and shook her head. "How- I mean how- just... just how? I don't smoke, I've never smoked. I mean... I- I- how?!"

"Were you a heavy drinker?"

"No, I'm- well, yeah. Yes, yes, I was, but I quit. I've been sober for two years now."

Maharaj pointed to an enhanced image of Anna's liver. "Maybe so, but the damage has already been done. See those tumors there? Those have been growing largely unnoticed for nearly two years now. I'm told you only started to experience symptoms recently?"

And it was true. Two years ago, before Anna met Elsa, she had been hitting the bottle regularly. Ever since Nora had died when they were twelve, Anna had essentially followed the path their father had taken after their mother died, which was to drink away all the sorrow and pain as a maladaptive coping mechanism. Inevitably, this led to some serious liver damage as a result, increasing the odds of developing cancer which had now come to fruition.

"But... but I- I-" Anna buried her face in her hands, taking as deep a breath as she could through her cancerous lungs. "I thought, I mean..." she trailed off and squeezed her eyes shut.

"Living on Earth certainly didn't help either," Maharaj said as gently as he could. "Were you ever exposed to a large dose of radiation? Higher than average over long-term absorption rates?"

Another thing that was true. Anna had nearly died from radiation poisoning, not to mention having her left arm used as a chew toy by a mutated wolf.

"Yes," Anna mumbled. "But I was given Detoxicillin. It should have cured my radiation poisoning."

"Detoxicillin?" Maharaj frowned. "Only a doctor could administer that, and if you hadn't been to a checkup-"

"It was my sister. She gave it to me. Look, we found some of the stuff in an abandoned hospital, okay? That's how we got it."

"Which would also explain your sparse records. I won't fault you for doing what you had to do to survive on Earth, I understand that. I came from Mumbai, and things weren't any better there compared to New York. Be that as it may, it's more than likely you found that Detoxicillin in improper storage conditions. I suspect it was also past its expiry date and less effective as a result."

"But it fixed me," Anna said in a quiet, frail voice. "I got better."

"It stopped the immediate, short-term effects of radiation poisoning. Namely cell destruction and organ failure," Maharaj explained. "But even then, with your exposure, no matter how much or how brief, it wasn't enough to stop the long-term effects you're beginning to experience now. If anything, it seemed to have accelerated the growth of your cancer."

"So that's it?" Anna let her hands fall to her lap as she looked at Maharaj, her eyes beseeching for any form of reprieve from the fatal news. "I'm dying?"

"I'm so sorry," Maharaj dipped his head in sympathy.

"I don't understand. This doesn't make any sense!" Anna stood up from her wheelchair, ignoring the pain in her body as her heart and mind began to pace. "It's the twenty-second century, isn't there a cure for cancer now? Isn't there a way to treat it?"

Maharaj gestured for Anna to sit. "Miss Deckard, please, sit down," he said gently. "We can discuss-"

"No!" Anna pointed at him. "No, I can't just sit down and listen to you tell me how I'm gonna fucking die. There has to be something!"

Maharaj nodded and held his hands up submissively. "Alright, alright, I can see that you're a fighter," he sighed. "But in answer to your question, no, there isn't a cure for cancer."

"Why the fuck not?!"

"Because cancer isn't a disease or a virus that has a cure. It's like the common cold. There are thousands of different strains, different mutations, each playing by a set of different rules. It has nothing to do with medicine, or living healthy, or eating right. It's just entropy."

Anna finally sat back down, overcome by pain and despair. "What do you mean?"

"I'll explain, but how familiar are you with cellular biology?" Maharaj asked, leaning forward and interlacing his fingers.

Anna shrugged. "I only ever studied it enough to make conversation," she said sarcastically. "Lay it on me."

"All living organisms have cells. Little tiny messengers of DNA that carry your genetic information and perform the body's functions. A human body has trillions of cells. These cells are designed to reproduce themselves. They replicate and multiply which lets the body heal and grow. Are you following me so far?"

"Yeah, I get that."

"Now, every time a cell reproduces, there's a very, very small chance that a mutation could happen. Ordinarily, they would be harmless and mutations are essential for human evolution. But sometimes a mistake happens and a cell multiplies the wrong way, becoming cancerous. Now, given the unlikelihood of that, it was quite normal for most people to go their entire lives without developing cancer."

"But that's changed, I'm guessing."

"Correct. People are living longer than ever before, which means that there's more time for cells to multiply, which means more chances to develop cancer."

Anna looked down at her feet and shook her head. "And if you live long enough, that dice eventually rolls the wrong way."

"Yes," Maharaj nodded. "Just look at some of the older politicians who have been around since the twentieth century. Living to a hundred was a rare achievement back in the day, but now, people can live close to two hundred. The problem is, they are absolutely riddled with cancer and that's just the reality."

Anna started tapping her foot up and down restlessly as she scowled and looked off to the side. "So then how are they dealing with it?" she asked. "If they got fucking super cancer, how are they still alive?"

"Because if you're able to live that long in the first place, then you can afford around the clock, top-quality healthcare," Maharaj said. "They can afford routine checkups which would detect signs of cancer much sooner, and then develop a treatment plan. Usually, that involves a lab-grown organ replacement."

"Isn't that an option for me then?" Anna looked up, a brief flicker of hope appearing in her eyes. "Slice me open and replace my organs."

"Miss Deckard, this isn't just the one percent of the population we're talking about. This is the one percent of the one percent. They have the funds and the resources to make these things happen quickly for them. For anyone else, operations like that require time to source compatible replacements and additional time for the body to readjust post-surgery."

"Chemotherapy then, or radiation treatment, or stem cells, or just fucking cut this shit out of me! Something!"

"All of which would require serious capital. It would be partially covered by Arcadia's universal healthcare, but since you're an American expatriate lacking health insurance, and based on your financial records, it wouldn't be feasible for you."

"I'm fucked then," Anna looked down again, that flicker of hope dying in her eyes. "How long do I have?"

Maharaj glanced at the holo-displays. "At this rate, you'll be dead inside the year. Six months at the most."

A heavy silence settled upon them. Anna was still reeling from everything being dumped on her at once, but at the center of her mind was the only thing she cared about. The one person that would have been singularly affected the most by Anna's untimely departure from the world.

It was Elsa.

After everything they struggled for, after everything they endured, and after everything they had to overcome, it was all seemingly meaningless in the end. Anna was dying, and Elsa would be left alone. That fact scared Anna more than dying.

"Your situation isn't ideal and you have my sympathies," Maharaj started. "Given your timeline, even aggressive treatment with conventional methods would only delay the inevitable by a matter of weeks, and that's if you qualified for coverage in the first place. But it may not be as bleak as it appears. What I can do is prescribe you medication. Enafarol."

"Which would do what?" Anna asked impatiently.

"We can't treat your cancer but we can treat your symptoms. They've only just appeared but they will continue to get worse. The pain will become unbearable. Enafarol suppresses the symptoms by altering your body's immune responses and adjusts its pain receptors. You will look and feel healthy on the outside, but on the inside, your body will still be dying. At least this way, you'll be able to spend the time you need with your loved ones. Say proper goodbyes. Your exit from the world would be painless and dignified."

"That's as much as you can do?"

"I believe it is the best option in your circumstances. Moving forward, we can set up further meetings for regular consultations, and… closer to the end, we can have you moved into a hospice care facility if you'd like."

Maharaj continued to speak on the benefits of Enafarol, but whatever he was saying, Anna blanked and tuned out his voice. At the moment, all she could hear was white noise, drowning out all other senses as her mind partially dissociated from her body.

Anna looked down at her feet again and held her head in her hands. She knew then that even if she had a different national identity that qualified her for earlier citizenship, it still wouldn't have made a difference. Five years of required residence for American expatriates versus three years for everyone else meant nothing if Anna and Elsa had only been in Arcadia for two years. She wouldn't even make it to three years.

She didn't have coverage from insurance and she didn't qualify for universal healthcare under Arcadian law. Pursuing illicit options to falsify credentials wasn't feasible to try again a second time when her bank accounts were already strained from the first time. Working for Mulan wasn't feasible either because it would have meant taking on more dangerous jobs for higher pay. In and of itself counterintuitive to trying to survive in the first place.

Of course, there was the option of going to the rippers, the gang of organ harvesters that plagued the Arcadian sub-city. Even so, back-alley butchers were hardly reliable for trustworthy and viable organ replacements to begin with.

On top of that, Anna had to consider her current commitments to the android freedom movement and what it meant to Elsa. More on top of that, she had to consider her limited timeline. And finally, on top of all that, she had to consider the end of the world and the doomsday clock.

Running out of time and running out of options, Anna thought. God, that's lazy writing. What? Just because it started with a little cough a while ago, it means I have to die? Fucking stupid literary foreshadowing, fucking Chekhov's gun, fucking bullshit!

It was unfair, but then again, life was always unfair. The ticking time bomb had been set inside of Anna's body long ago and at this point, it was far too late to do anything to stop it. It was with bitter irony and fatal nihilism that she realized that even after she got her happy ending and even after her story should have ended without a sequel, the universe had other plans in store for her.

Why am I still here? Just to suffer? Fuck you! Fuck you, you himey fuck! Haven't I been through enough already?! Anna cursed the silent gods, the indifferent universe, and the careless winds of fortune. Why. Why me? Why?!

"Miss Deckard?" Maharaj's voice eventually cut through her thoughts. "Miss Deckard, I need your response. Shall I write you a prescription?"

Anna shut her eyes and took a few seconds to return to reality. "Yeah, yeah, just do it," she sighed. "I'll take whatever you can give me."

Maharaj nodded and typed away at the holo-display, then transferred the information to Anna's omni-pad. "Here it is. Just take that down to the pharmacy," he said, then cleared his throat. "And then, of course, there's the matter of your fees for today. Usage of the hospital bed, bioscanner, consultation, and your medication."

Anna's expression became flat and completely crestfallen, but at this point, she didn't have the will to argue or even question it. "Yeah, sure, whatever," she glanced at the laundry list of medical charges on her omni-pad and transferred the payment, emptying her main spending account. "Can I at least get a free wheelchair ride down to the pharmacy? Everything hurts."

"Of course," Maharaj gestured towards the door. "I'll send for the nurse."

With that, Anna departed from Maharaj's office, wheeled along by the android nurse from before. Once they made it to the pharmacy, she collected her prescription of Enafarol; a medicinal inhaler to be administered once a day to alleviate the onset of her cancer symptoms, and to be refilled each month for six months.

For now, the pain and discomfort were, at the most, distracting bordering on debilitating. Before long, it would become crippling, but at least Enafarol would solve that issue. However, nothing could solve the issue of Anna's internal clock ticking down the seconds until she was gone.

After being wheeled to the entrance to the hospital, Anna had to relinquish the wheelchair. She struggled to her feet, nodded her thanks to the android nurse, then limped out to carry on with the rest of her day.

… … …

The afternoon was sunny and bright, as per usual in Arcadia and not at all matching Anna's mood. She had wandered aimlessly around the city, walking with no real sense of direction or purpose until she eventually ended up in a dingy alley between two buildings. She was sitting on some old boxes, listlessly swinging her legs back and forth.

Alleyways, oddly enough, were strangely comforting to Anna. After all, she had spent much of her life on Earth living in places like that, sleeping rough in alleys, underpasses, sewer pipes, and more. If anything, they were familiar which helped her feel somewhat better. Two years ago, she also had the most profound realization of her life in an alley. Now, she had to come to terms with her own life once more.

The fact was, she was dying.

Anna would be gone. Elsa would be left alone. The one person in the world she loved the most and cherished the most would have to carry on without her. Elsa deserved better, and Anna couldn't give that to her.

As she sat there, thinking about the absurdity of life, the unfairness of it all, the pointlessness of existence, she couldn't help but see the funny side of things. At first, she giggled, then she chuckled, then she doubled over with deranged, delirious laughter. She laughed until it became hard to breathe, which made her laugh even harder. She laughed until she started to wheeze, choke, and cough, making everything hurt, making her laugh even harder than before.

Anna laughed until she was cackling like a madwoman. She laughed until there was no more joy to be found in the saddening clarity and everything just became pain. Tears formed in her eyes and soon, her laughter turned into manic, desperate sobbing as she clutched her chest, struggling to breathe, weeping all the while.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

When she eventually quieted down and her coughing subsided, Anna leaned over and hacked up a thick globule of blood. It was then she realized there was no way she could tell Elsa what was going on.

"I can't tell her, it would break her heart," Anna said to herself, wiping her mouth. "How would I even tell her? Hey, honey! Remember how you died and came back to life and we got a second chance? Well, turns out, I'm dying of terminal cancer and I have six months to live! I'm dying and that's it! Sorry!"

She brought up her omni-pad and began scrolling through the thousands of images she had taken with Elsa. All of them were happy memories and treasured moments, filled with nothing but sweetness and bliss. As Anna looked through them, she smiled again, but with no light or joy in her eyes.

"Am I really gonna keep this a secret from her?" Anna asked herself. "Again? After hashing everything out? Are we really redoing this stupid plot point where the conflict is easily resolvable if the main characters just talk to each other? Ugh, that's such a tired, overused trope."

Anna came across an image, a selfie, taken when they had first moved into their apartment. It was unfurnished at the time, but they were in their bedroom, surrounded by nothing but filled with warmth, hope, and possibility. Anna was napping in that image, curled up against Elsa's side. Elsa was looking into the camera, her ocean blue eyes alight with adoration.

"But how in the hell am I supposed to tell her?" Anna continued. "Especially with everything she's focused on now, I can't distract her. I mean, obviously, I'll tell her at some point, but not now. Now... now I have to... what do I have to do?"

As if on cue, a voice spoke to her.

"Are you lost?"

"Huh? Who's there?" Anna looked up and down the alley both ways. "Hello?"

"It is an unfortunate fate that has found you. You have sad eyes. Like you have seen many sad things."

Anna turned around and saw a Buddhist monk standing before her, dressed in orange robes. The sash tied around his head and covering his eyes indicated that he was quite blind, but what was most baffling of all was that he had seemingly appeared from nowhere.

"Where did you come from?" Anna asked, surprised and a bit confused. "There was nobody else here but me. How did you get here?"

The monk smiled knowingly. "I go where I am needed, though, I suspect I have arrived early in your case," he gestured to the spot next to Anna. "May I sit with you?"

"Uh, sure, yeah," Anna cleared her throat and coughed a few times.

"Thank you," the monk settled in next to Anna.

"So, who are you?" Anna asked. "Are you some kind of MacGuffin? Some sort of convenient plot contrivance to drive my character development?"

"I beg your pardon?" the monk frowned.

"Nothing. Forget about it."

"Who do I look like to you?"

"A priest or a monk, I guess," Anna shrugged.

"Curious," the monk laughed. "This would be the first time I have appeared to anyone that way."

"Sorry, err, brother? Is that the proper way to address you?"

"Ajahn is the traditional title ascribed to practicing monks of the faith under Thai wisdom."

"Right. Sorry, I didn't know."

"No apology is necessary."

"You got a name, Ajahn…?"

The monk glanced at Anna, looking at her with a shrewd expression. "Why would you care what my name is?" he asked. "You have forgotten far more important names than mine."

Anna looked at the monk, seeing him and not really seeing him. Whoever he was, he was certainly mysterious, yet, she couldn't shake the feeling that he was familiar. An old name or an old face she had long forgotten. In any case, his presence was already calming to Anna and she was feeling uncharacteristically forthcoming with this stranger.

"Tell me, what ails you?" the monk asked.

"I'm, uh... I'm dying," Anna cleared her throat. "Yeah, I got cancer. I got cancer in my lungs and my liver, and I got it trying to drink myself to death a few years ago."

The monk nodded, remaining silent until Anna continued.

"All those times I was shot at, all those scraps I've been in, all those fights... and in the end, the thing that killed me was myself," Anna looked down and closed her eyes. "I've lived a bad life."

"We all live bad lives," the monk said. "We all sin. But I know you."

Anna scoffed. "You don't know me."

"Forgive me, but you do not know you. And that is the problem."

"What do you mean?"

"The road you have walked has been long, fraught with peril at every step," the monk said. "But you have struggled, endured, and survived. Not only that, you have helped people where you can, often at your own cost. You have always meant well, but perhaps you have not always ended up doing well."

Anna sighed and stared off into nothing. "I had a sister. She passed away. I got a woman who loves me, I almost threw that away. My mom, she died when I was born. And my dad... well, I watched him die. And it wasn't soon enough," she shook her head. "I went and made my choices a long time ago. Guess it's finally time I paid for my sins. I should have died so many times before."

The monk considered that for a moment. "Like you, I do not enjoy my work and yet, it is fundamental," he said. "Life is full of pain, but there is also love and beauty. Kindness and compassion."

Again, Anna took a good look at the monk. He was blind, but he seemed to see things beyond sight. He spoke with the kind of clarity that one can only experience after many lifetimes, unsurprising given that he was a Buddhist monk, a believer in reincarnation.

"Death is not the end, but rebirth," the monk smiled. "Nothing in life is permanent. Not sorrow, not joy. Change is the only constant. We all must bend and weave with the tide. That is the truth."

"What am I gonna do now?" Anna asked, her voice delicate, desperate for an answer.

"Be grateful that for the first time in your life, you see things clearly."

"I don't know if that's right. All I ever did was try and survive, even when there wasn't any point, even before I had something to live for. I never used to care about dying. Hell, I wanted to die. Now, I have someone to live for and a reason to live, and I don't... I don't want to go yet."

"Perhaps you should finish your unfinished business then? Help some people who need help. There is no shortage of lost souls in this world. We all could use a little guidance, a little hand to lead us on the right path. All you can do now is decide what kind of person you want to be in the time that you have left."

"But I still don't know what to believe in," Anna muttered despairingly. "Never had much use for religion or prayer or whatever. Never saw the point."

"Hmm," the monk chuckled. "Often, neither do I."

"Huh, no kidding," Anna looked at the monk with a curious and slightly amused expression.

"But then I meet someone like you and everything makes sense," the monk said.

Anna laughed, wheezing. "You're too smart for me," she smiled thinly, then her expression changed again. "I guess I…" she looked at the monk, eyes wide and glassy, completely vulnerable. "I'm afraid."

"There is nothing to be afraid of, Anna," the monk squeezed her shoulder. "Take a gamble that good exists, and do a good deed," he stood up and started walking away.

Anna took a second to realize that she never once introduced herself. "Hey, wait!" she called after the monk. "How do you know who I am? Who are you?"

"This is not the first time that we have met," the monk replied without looking back. "You will remember my name before the end."

He rounded a corner and passed into a shadow. When he did, the last flash of his orange robes showed that they had somehow turned black as night.

"Wait, just wait a minute!" Anna stood up and raced after him, ignoring the pain. "Tell me how you know me! When have we- what the...?"

When she rounded the same corner, she came face to face with a dead end. The monk had vanished as mysteriously as he had arrived. With him gone, Anna winced from the pain wracking her body and limped back to her seat, settling down with a huff. She pulled out the Enafarol inhaler from the inner pocket of her long coat and stared at it for a long time, thinking of what to do next.

"Maybe that guy had a point, whoever he was," Anna muttered to herself. "I can't help myself, but I can help Elsa. I can help the people who need helping. Maybe that's all that matters in the end. Help more than you hurt. Try and do whatever good you can."

Before Anna got Elsa back, she had only ever tried to help herself most of the time. Survival had been her sole priority during a time in her life when she wasn't sure what she was surviving for. She had tried to do whatever she could to help those in need whenever she could, but her main focus was still herself. Since reuniting with Elsa, she had become the singular focus of Anna's protective instincts, the literal center of her universe. Nothing else mattered to her but Elsa's safety.

But now, that wouldn't be enough. If Anna was going to help out and do some real good and make some real change, she would have to step it up. She had to do what was right for the world she cared about in the time that she had left. It wasn't enough to care about herself, or about Elsa. She had to open up to the world she shut out so long ago out of fear of losing anyone else.

Elsa. K. Flynn. Rapunzel. Mouse. Augur. Takahashi. Theodore. Rufus. Lizzie. They were all a part of the android freedom movement, fighting for something they believed in. Something that was bigger than them. That was Anna's world and those were the people who were important to her, and she would have to fight to make as much of a difference as possible.

Nora would have felt the same way because when the time came for her to shuffle off her mortal coil, she willingly handed over her body to Elsa.

Having decided her course, Anna placed the inhaler in her mouth and took a deep breath. Immediately, the pain in her body vanished, her lungs cleared, her cough subsided, and her mind sharpened into focus. Then, she got up to her feet, shook herself off, and made her way out of the alley and back into the sunlight.

Anna needed to make a call.

Citations.

Lents, Nathan H. "Why Everyone Will Eventually Get Cancer." Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, May 22, 2018.

Hanselmann, Rainer G, and Cornelius Welter. "Origin of Cancer: An Information, Energy, and Matter Disease." Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology 4, no. 121 (2016). 10.3389/fcell.2016.00121