2123: Crittenton, Florence

Crittenton, Florence

She was hungry again. It was coming in waves. She was amazed at how much the meaning of this sensation had changed. When she was a teenager, she had reveled in hunger. It was a victory. God, that was so long ago. Now, she started to cry, silently, while she thought about any possible way that she could convince them to give her food. There was no guard to offer sex to. There was no food in this building to steal. And there was so little outside left to run to. She had no leverage. There was nothing of herself to offer up; there was nothing left of her they needed.

The door to the holding room slid open and a woman stepped inside. She was tall, slender, and wore a black skirt and blouse with long taffeta sleeves. Her bronze skin was very smooth, almost like the hardened plastic of a doll, but her face had warmth, like summer fruit. She had very dark curls that hung in a soft, lush canopy about her chin. Two feathery black brows winged round dark eyes. Her nose protruded sharply outward in a sharp, neat point.

Neti felt a small ache inside her chest, like a stitch in muscle. It was the emotion of envy, easily recognizable but also easily handled. Every Biologic on Earth had come to know envy, jealousy, and longing intimately, as day to day an emotion as boredom once was. The most beautiful among the Biological were no match for an Upload. The wisest of the Biological knew not to struggle and had finally learned to give up on beauty, to stop struggling and let it tug at their heart, like allowing the string of a fishing line to drag them on through water forever. Neti flattered herself that she was on her way to such a sense of peace. She mostly credited the little being inside her.

The woman sat in the chair across from Neti soundlessly. She crossed her legs. A black leather bag hung by a strap across her torso. Her stockings had no runs. Her shoes were so glossy, they looked almost wet. She pressed her lips together and then dimpled as she released a staple smile.

“My name is Vela. I am your caseworker.” Her voice was very low and cool like water. “And your name is Marielle.”

Vela reached out a hand and placed it upon Neti’s left, which was locked in place on the stainless-steel table. The vice grips had sprung up when Neti first sat and snapped shut about her wrists like fly traps. Now, Neti watched the tight skin of Vela’s fingers brush over the vein-stained stretch of loosening skin covering the back of her own hand.

“My name is not Marielle,” She said slowly, “My name is Neti.”

Vela drew back slightly and sucked her bottom lip, eyes darting back and forth between Marielle’s. She was not surprised. She was considering.

“I know this other name is important to you. So, I will not address you by Marielle. Okay? No names. You will just be another case.”

“My name is Neti.”

She was so thirsty. It hurt to speak, and she regretted it. She needed water. Her baby inside her needed water.

Vela stared, her smile lightening like a flickering light, and for a moment, the coldness in her spider eyes chilled Neti and she imagined this caseworker matter-of-factly, patiently, breaking her nose with a calm and concentrated punch. Instead, the woman parted her lips and spoke in a flat voice, dreamy expression unchanged.

“You never uploaded.”

“No.”

“You are choosing,” she said, glancing down for a moment at the gloss of black glass on her wrist, “To grow a baby inside your own inhospitable environment.”

She nodded her head towards Neti’s stomach. Neti did not look down. Her stomach was round and full as a planet beneath her light gray sweater. Vela narrowed her gaze at the patch ironed on the cloth a hundred years before. Cardinals. It was vintage: cheaply made, poorly stitched, a relic of the past, evidence of that ravenous era of human consumption. Hunger: the clearest sign of a Biologic. At her neck was a small necklace, the chain short, fine, and fading to green. Tucked beneath her collar was a locket, the clasp barely holding, but holding. Inside was her own name, Neti, and the name waiting for her little child. Belle.”

“No,” said Neti, “I am choosing to grow my baby within your inhospitable environment.”

“And you’re wanting to keep it,” said the woman, ignoring Neti. She was tapping gently on her watch with one finger, careful not to touch the screen with her pearly nail.

“Her.”

“You would like to keep her.”

“Yes.”

“And be her mother,”

“I am her mother,” said Neti. Vela’s black watch ticked furiously. She checked it again, eyes scanning, and then turned her attention back to Neti, settling her hands in lap, clasped.

“They won’t even tell me who’s taking her,” Neti murmured.

“You know why they wouldn’t tell you. I must remind you that according to my file, you of all people should appreciate the luck of a better home. This baby is going to have a better home.”

“Not this baby—my baby.”

“As a Biologic, you have no legal right to any baby. You could have applied for a long-term contract, found an Upload who wanted a pet project. You could have made some money out of your one remaining labor of value. You could have visited the baby. I mean, I understand why you would not think to apply for a donation birthing program. With your history, you are an unlikely candidate. Of course, any lab is a cleaner space for growth than the average Biologic citizen, but you are an exceptionally poor vessel.

At this point, Vela was slipping a tablet from her sleek leather bag. Neti could see her file, see the white frame of light that was her picture. She was glad she could not see her face.

“You are a long-term smoker. You are an addict. You are also old, a self-indulgence that would be a red flag to anyone looking to adopt your child. Essentially, you are high risk. Still, you had options. This is your responsibility, Neti. You knew this would happen if you didn’t make it official.”

When Neti said nothing, Vela spun the tablet and pushed it towards her until it was directly in front of her. Neti considered the Vela’s expression, cool and still like dew, and then looked down at the square of light. Her vision blurred for a moment then clarified. Above paragraphs of tiny words, like ranks of ants, was a block of titular information.

FC #4243. GLACYZ, MARIELLE. B/F.

DOB: 09. 03. 2039

RELINQUISHMENT.

09. 04. 2039.

CUSTODY: State of Virginia.

“I need water. And food.”

The case worker looked up from her watch through her curls, dark eyes wet and glossy and curious like a deer.

“Why?”

“The baby. Even your generation don’t believe in depriving a baby, right?”

“No, we do not,” said Vela, unphased, “But she will be fine. Once she is outside you, her upload will be immediate. We don’t have the resources to prolong her period of gestation and frankly, we’re seeing less and less value in that kind of experimentation.”

“No—”

“You, of any Biologic, should know that this is the right thing to do. You were of the last generation of adopted babies not to be uploaded. Your “kind,” as you phrased it, begged for your birth certificates, screamed for open adoptions. What did you learn? What did you get from it? Nothing. It is not losing you that will hurt your baby, Neti. It is leaving the door even an inch open for her to know you.

It hurt so much to speak, Neti thought she might cough blood. Still, she managed. “You don’t understand.”

“Did you think this had never happened before? We know how it goes. It only takes seven months before you show up, claiming you have some right to this child growing inside you. Never mind the paint thinner, the microplastic, the hormones, the antibiotic-resistant bacteria that your placenta drains into that baby every day. You have rights to nothing. You are only the storm that baby survives.” Vela said this flatly, not unkindly, a small smile playing on her cherry red lips. She looked young enough to be Neti’s daughter if Neti had a baby young. But too beautiful. As Neti bowed her head toward her belly, her face flooding, transforming into a riverbed, she could see wisps of her silvering hair, blonde drained, strands brittle and bright in the light.

“She’ll miss me,” Neti begged. She squeezed her eyes shut. She could not bear to look this woman in the eyes. “She will miss me.” She heard Vela tap a heel gently, thoughtfully, against the ground.

“She is a baby, Neti. She will not even remember you.”

“Yes, she will. I remembered my mother. I missed her. Not in the way anyone ever took seriously. Not in the way where I could tell you what her name was or what she looked like. But I knew she was missing. I knew it every day, in my heart, like, the way you know you are sick at the end of life, the way you know someone you love has died before you are told. I talk to my baby girl, and she stops kicking. Her little mind knows me, its earliest root is deep inside me. She is a part of me. It is a crime to take me away from her. I tell you, it will hurt her. Maybe not like the toxins and plastics and poison this world’s been pumping into my body since I was small like her. But in the way that makes you less of a human. Less alive.”

She looked up. She could barely see through the tears. Vela was thoughtfully striking her watch with one finger. A slight frown creased the perfect skin of her forehead. Then, with such speed and dexterity that Neti could barely cry out, Vela untucked the mosquito needle slid up her sleeve, and buried it efficiently into the blue tadpole of Neti’s vein. The sedative roared into her ears like a storm until all Neti could hear was the pounding of her second heart.

The light came into her without her opening her eyes. The first thing she felt was the emptiness. It was a raw and papery feeling, what she imagined it would be like to slip from her skin. It made her flinch when the light reached the deepest darkest places inside her and she felt it warm the walls that had gone brittle and dry in the night, like a shell deadening around empty space. She reached up to her neck and felt for her best thing, her imperfect monument, her second heart. And she cried as she grasped skin, grasped nothing, grasped, and grasped for baby Belle.