Happiness

Happiness

“It was real, and you know it. I still haven’t—”

“Please use “I” statements and first names only. Ownership of our actions and thoughts is imperative to progressing in therapy.” Dr. Roberts smiles and darts her eyes to the left corner of the room.

They are watching. They are always watching, her glance tells him. Dr. Roberts straightens her skirt and shifts her weight in the stiff, brown-back leather chair. She takes a deep, calming breath and picks up her pen and pad once more. “Shall we start again?”

Andrew nods. “Yes, Doctor. I’m ready to take responsibility for my actions.”

“Very well. Let’s go back a few moments. I want to know what was ‘real’ and with whom. Use that vast vocabulary of yours,” Dr. Roberts says with a wink.

She winked! Andrew knew she had winked. Now, he looks at the camera in the top left corner of the room. His heart is racing. Dr. Roberts is cleaning her glasses on the burgundy scarf draped over her shoulders. As she pretends to clear her lenses of imaginary dust, her gaze remains steady.

“Andrew. I would hate to waste time when we have so little of it.” As Dr. Roberts replaces her frames on the bridge of her nose, partially obscuring the pink birthmark covering the majority of her nostrils, she points at the heart-shaped locket hanging from Andrew’s neck. Dr. Roberts wears a matching necklace; however, instead of white cord, hers dangles from a chain. Andrew often wonders where she had purchased such a luxury, since mining had been outlawed since 2042.

“Andrew,” Dr. Roberts says with a smile. “I will count backwards from ten. Grab the locket on five, or I will be blocked from Anamne-Stitching.”

“Right, of course.” Andrew lies down on the soft suede divan and presses the lids of his eyes together. “10” – “9” – “8” – “7” --- “6” --- “5” Andrew nearly snatches the locket from his neck, then, a brief poke and searing pain shoots through his palm. “4” ---- “3” ---- Dr. Robert’s now distorted voice continues the countdown as Andrew falls through the darkness.

When he opens his eyes, he is no longer in Dr. Robert’s office. He was laying on a blanket with Anisa. The sun was warm and bright, but not blinding. It was 2123, and he had just turned 30. The war was over. Anisa was 27, and she had waited for him. For five long years. Every week he had received her letters, sprayed with perfume, covered with lipsticked kisses, or, sometimes, a pair of panties. He cherished the words on the page. He memorized the stroke of each of her letters, the curve of her penmanship. Each mark on the page brought him joy as he lay in the regeneration tent. Growing a finger or two for 5 or 6 hours was equal to 7 weeks’ of letters. A foot or hand, about 18 weeks’ of letters. A leg equaled approximately 33 musings, jokes, anecdotes, and I love yous. Adventures in medical school studying and searching for cures utilizing gene therapy and increasing fertility.

“I’m sorry, Andrew. I…I didn’t intend to intrude.”

Dr. Roberts is standing in the center of the Republic’s REGEN Bay. Her figure shimmers each time a nurse or doctor runs through her projected silhouette. Andrew was lying in a cylindrical tent with tubes snaking through his mangled leg. The bone had disintegrated just below the knee. His shredded skin hung like a tattered dress. Blood dripped from his appendage and was slurped up immediately by the floating vacuum, COBRA etched on its side. Andrew breathed in time with the robotic recreation of his leg. One set of tiny robotic hands worked on neurons, cells. Another set, humming and whistling rhythmically as it emitted an egg white paste to mimic bone. A third, larger group of mini-bots moved in a lattice pattern adding skin; all of them working in conjunction to mend the young soldier back to together.

“No intrusion. I don’t really remember why I brought us here.” Andrew lay there grimacing, half in the present and half in the past, clutching the locket in his left hand, and a bundle of letters in the right. He involuntarily jerks his hand grasping the letters. “Oh this was a bad one,” Andrew says, his voice breaking with an amused grimace as he gestures towards his serrated leg. “These letters kept me alive. I loved Anisa with everything I had. I could hear her voice, her laughter, feel her tears through every word on the page.”

Dr. Roberts has not moved. Her eyes widen as she fiercely fights an onslaught of tears. “I think we should go back to the meadow, Andrew.” She manages an unconvincing but toothy smile.

“Yes, absolutely.” Andrew squeezes the locket again, and there they were. Younger Andrew and Anisa. They had just made love outside in a transparent tent fashioned by Anisa that pumped oxygen inside. “We have two hours total,” Anisa said. “If you don’t stop all that deep breathing, we’re only going to have 30 minutes left!” She laughed and poked him in the ribs.

“But you take my breath away, baby.” Andrew responded. They laughed and rolled around in the tent, and Anisa traced his scars.

“So it doesn’t bother you that I’m an A-Chrom…” Anisa wouldn’t or couldn’t look at him.

“I couldn’t care less.” Andrew said as he pulled a finger through her coils.

“Ouch! Rude, you’ve been gone so long, you forgot that Black girls don’t like their hair to be touched.”

“Ok fine I’ll stop.”

“No,” Anisa laughed. “You get a pass just because you survived the war.”

“Why are you such a hellion?” Andrew grabbed a cloud of her hair and pulled gently.

“Baby seriously…you know the Republic might not allow this.” She held her left hand up. It shimmered beautifully in the fading sunlight. The wooden ring had been encrusted with jewels made by the same robots that had put Andrew together time and again. Each jewel was a different size making it so very unique and so very much hers.

“Fuck the Republic. I served five years and lost my legs, my arms. Do you know how many times I went through REGEN?!!? I don’t care about re-populating Ganymede. Do you have any idea how many children were orphaned in the war? We can adopt one thousand children from Titan, but the goddamn Republic cares more about purity and rules and “happiness” than reconciliation and rebirth. It’s a Eugen con.”

He flicked her nose. “Besides, you’re my little Piggie.”

Anisa rested her chin on his chest and winked.

“I love when you get all political baby. So when are we running away?” They kissed again and were frozen for a moment in Andrew’s mind. Her charcoal hair, the setting of the sun through the transparent tent, the weightlessness of it all, the sound of their hearts beating in synch, the smell of Anisa’s skin.

He drops the locket and falls to his knees through the sunlight and the grass and the breeze he couldn’t feel, and back into the present, hitting the carpeted floor. Back into the heavy, predictable, loveless now.

Andrew stifles a sob. “It was so real.” The locket sways from his neck metronomically. “I was happy, so happy, happy, happy…” He repeats the words over and over.

“Andrew, it’s time,” Dr. Roberts says quietly. She wants to touch him, to hold him, to console, but they are watching.

“I’m not ready, please,” Andrew whimpers.

“Andrew, I will see you next week. I promise. It will get better.”

He looks at her, tears leaking salty trails down his cheeks, dripping through his beard, and dissolving into the space between now and then. “No, it won’t.”

“Andrew,” Dr. Roberts whispers. She is close, on her knees next to him, extending a box of cloth napkins imprinted with the Republic’s insignia of a planet with five rings, a fetus in the center of it all. Andrew accidentally brushes her fingertips while removing a tissue. The fleeting contact seems as though it could boil over into more tears, laughter, vomit, neither could be sure.

“How often do you –”

“Every night she comes to me in my dreams. True happiness…but only in my sleep.”

The silence provides solace for them both, momentarily.

“Here is your prescription, Andrew.” Dr. Roberts hands him a small etched acrylic panel. “I have decided to increase your dosage of Felizapram, the only prescription the New Republic endorses for its citizens’ health and well-being. The New Republic has a proven record of gaging true passion and placing each of its citizens with their most compatible mate to proliferate our planet.”

Andrew does not move. “Please Andrew, please take it.” Dr. Robert’s voice trembles. Her eyes once again say, “They’re watching.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Lieutenant General Andrew Lim, your session has ended.” A feminine robotic voice emanates from somewhere in the room. “Thank you for cooperating with your mandatory BIPass treatment. Please proceed to the Pharmacopoeia immediately. And remember, when you trust in the New Republic, it trusts in You.”

The door at the opposite end of the room slides open, and the light swallows Andrew before the panel slides back into place.

“Dr. Roberts,” the robotic voice calls from behind the desk. “Your next appointment will arrive in 13 minutes and 22 seconds. Please prepare.”

“Of course.” She sits behind the desk and clips her hair back. She pulls a stack of papers from one folder and attempts to look as though she is reading the next patient’s file.

“Dr. Roberts,” a different voice seeps through the walls of the room, a man’s voice.

“Yes, Director?”

“Please hold the picture up to the camera.”

Dr. Roberts reacts viscerally.

“Dr. Roberts, I am waiting.”

“Yes, Director.” She stands and walks to the camera in the corner with the tiny postcard in tow. “Forever. Together. My Piglet” is scrawled on the bottom in Andrew’s handwriting. The postcard displays the loving couple: tears drying on Anisa’s cheeks, wind blowing through her halo of hair, Andrew’s lips pressed to the birthmark on her nose. The picture was taken four days after the war ended. He had just proposed, and Anisa did not say “yes”; instead, she answered with a kiss.

“We have allowed you to keep such contraband as a reminder of what emotions can do to our system. Love is secondary to the greater good – increasing our population. The Happy Together Program works.”

“Yes, Director.”

“As someone afflicted with Aneuploidy Chromosomata, the risk of defects and fatalities is too great. You serve the Republic well through your research and therapeutic tactics. We could never have developed Felizapram without you. Remember, trust the Republic, and – ”

“It will trust You,” Dr. Roberts mumbles.

“Very well. Please take one 30 milligram dosage of Felizapram, on camera, before your next patient arrives.”

Dr. Roberts opens her mouth to express her disapproval.

“No need to protest, Doctor. It has already been delivered.”

The panel slides open once more as a Martinet in a white coat enters. A silver Destab COBRA rests in a holster strapped to his left hip. He carries a tray with a glass of water and one dark green hexagonal pill stamped with the Republic’s insignia.

Dr. Roberts places the pill on her tongue for all to see. The bitter capsule disintegrates before she gulps the water and washes the tablet’s residue to the satisfaction of both the Martinet and the Director. She returns the glass to the soldier’s tray, and he exits via the sliding panel door.

The melodic robotic voice returns. “Your next patient arrives in 4 minutes and 48 seconds. To Happiness.”

Dr. Roberts blots the mascara pooled under her eyes. The endorphins began to course through her body. “To the Republic and the Happiness of its citizens!”