New North

On some primal level, there’s a familiarity to this feeling — the thirst, the headache, the fog shrouding my awareness. I can recognize the hum of white noise and the faint shivering of the bed beneath me, and when I open my eyes in the dark, I know I’ve been here before.

I wait for the rest of it to come back to me, for that tip-of-the-tongue feeling to dissipate, but it never does. Trying to remember the where, the when, and the why is like trying to catch vapour.

I push against rising panic as I sit up in the bed. There’s a low roof above me that I soon understand to be the underside of a bunk, just like the one flush against the wall to my right. As my eyes continue to adjust to the darkness, I can only make out lumpy shapes beneath the blankets. The shadows are tinged with moonlight, and I follow it to the window that stretches the length of the wall beyond my feet.

From the view, it looks like we’re on a train, passing over a viaduct. A cityscape stretches out before us, buildings of incongruous heights twinkling and blinking under the blanket of night. In the centre of it all, one wing-shaped skyscraper stands taller and brighter than the rest. It’s a stunning view, and it prompts an odd, unsettling thought:

I can’t afford this train carriage.

I grip the sheet covering my legs, balling it up in sweaty fists.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to surface for another week.”

My blood spikes in my veins, and I whip my head around toward the voice. The words are far too loud over the quiet white noise filling the space. My eyes flick to the dark shape of the passenger sleeping in the bottom bunk kitty-corner to mine. I can just make out a woman’s face and the glint of open eyes in the moonlight.

“What?” I ask her, my voice barely above a whisper.

She shakes her head as best as she can while its still nestled in her pillow. “They can’t hear you. Sierra just went under for another thirty, and Kee’s got forty-something left.”

I don't understand half of what she says, but when I glance at the dark shape in the bunk above her, I notice it hasn’t moved an inch despite the noise.

I have about a thousand questions, but my throat continues to burn and my head still aches, so I ask the only one that matters: “Do you know where I can get some water?”

I think I see her brows furrow. “Like, more than a cup?”

“Any water.”

She frees one of her arms to point somewhere above me. I follow her shadowed finger to several small, glowing symbols engraved in the side rail of the bed frame above me. One of them appears to be a cup bisected by a wavy line. I press it eagerly, watching it turn blue beneath my finger, and flinch as a hidden platform detaches from the underside of the bunk above me. As it begins to descend, I see it’s not a platform at all, but the floor of a hollow column with two side panels. A rubber tube running from somewhere up inside the bed is pressed flush to the centre of the column floor, and as it comes to a stop just above my lap, the tube makes a brief sucking noise before retracting. It leaves a cup of water in its place.

I definitely can’t afford this train carriage.

“Did you seriously not remember that was there?” The woman says as she props herself up on her elbows. “See, this is why I don’t do gas. Who knows what that stuff’s doing to your brain.”

I’m only half listening as I chug the water, gasp, and hit the button for another cup. As I wait for the tube to descend for a refill, I watch the woman swing her legs over the side of her bed with a groan.

“You’re pregnant,” I say. I don’t say enormously pregnant, though that would have been more accurate.

With my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I can see her eyes roll up to glare at me beneath her lashes. “So your observation skills are clearly still intact. My name is Carmine, by the way, in case you forgot that too.”

Now that the water has cleared my head a little, I notice she does look familiar in some roundabout way, like a stranger resembling a celebrity whose name escapes you. I try again to grasp at the niggling recognition in the back of my mind, but it’s like trying to remember a dream.

I try to control my breathing. Panic won't help me.

With my hands still gripping the sheets around me, I take in the rest of the room, looking for an escape. There's a curved door on the wall behind me, smooth white plastic just like the rest of the room. On the ticker tape above it, one word scrolls by, lit in neon blue:

...Northbound...Northbound...Northbound...

I wait for an elaboration — a destination, our next stop, even the name of the rail company — but nothing else comes.

"Where are we going?"

"Funny," Carmine says. It's my turn to glare at her. Her attitude is starting to annoy me, and I'm strangely grateful for it. It's hard to panic when you're irritated.

But then I look back out the window, and I freeze.

“How long is this viaduct?”

Carmine follows my gaze. “Viaduct?”

“We’ve been going for ten minutes and still haven’t passed that skyscraper.” I scramble out of my bed and move to the window, pointing to it. “That one. It’s like we’re circling it.”

There’s a pause where I can feel the other woman’s eyes burning into the side of my face. Quietly, she says, “Miriam, honey, I think you need to sit down.”

“What, am I wrong?” I ask her, my tone biting as my anxiety rises. “Where the hell are we anyway?”

Suddenly there’s a sensation in my lower abdomen, like the wriggling of a fish trapped just beneath the skin, leaving ripples of water in its wake. I gasp, and my hand flies to my stomach just as the feeling dissipates.

Carmine raises her eyebrows. “Kicking?”

I feel the blood leave my face as I look down at my stomach. It’s a slight change, slight enough that I didn’t notice before, but I can see now that my abdomen is more distended than I ever remember it being. I move to touch it and find that my hand just hovers there, the tips of my fingers numb and tingling with panic.

I look up at Carmine, who is watching me with what looks like a mix of pity and bewilderment. There are so many questions on my lips, but when I open my mouth, all that comes out is a whimper.

Suddenly her face slackens, and her eyes harden with determination. “Okay, that’s it.”

I’m still mute as she sticks her hand under the lip of her bed frame, and I hear an electronic chirp as she hits one of the buttons.

After a beat, the carriage door slides open with a hiss of compressed air, and the room is lit up with phosphorescent light. I have to screw my eyes shut against it, my retinas smarting like I’ve been in the dark for weeks. When I’m brave enough to crack open my eyelids, I notice there doesn’t appear to be a source of light — the room simply glows white, as if the walls themselves are the bulbs. I peer up at the top bunks, but the shapes don’t stir beneath their blankets despite the disturbance.

Then I notice the person in the doorway.

He’s a lanky man in a sleek grey suit that looks to be made of a strange, stiff material, like Kevlar, or the hard underside of a carpet. His shock of blonde hair is slicked back against his skull and his features are as pointed as a rat’s. A metal name tag over his breast reads Derrick.

Carmine doesn’t waste time with pleasantries. “You may want to check her. Your gas messed with her head.”

If the way she spits the word “gas” doesn’t make her derision clear, the look on her face does.

Derrick looks to me, and his eyebrows slide up incrementally. I get the impression he’s had work done on the majority of his face. “Miss Miriam. You’re awake.”

He says it in a polite, if mildly surprised sort of way, but the comment is so asinine that it makes me flush with anger. I march up to him and try to keep the trembling out of my voice. “I want to know where we’re going. And if you say northbound, I’ll scream.”

Carmine gives a soft snort. “See what I mean?”

Derrick’s gaze flicks from me to Carmine and back again. When he looks into my eyes, there’s a small thrill of unease in my gut. There is something off about his gaze. He has the unseeing look of someone who is blind, yet he appears to be making eye contact without any issue.

Derrick bows his head to me graciously. “Of course. I can show you the whole route, in fact. But first, could you remind me of where you’re from, Miriam?”

“Winnipeg,” I say. “Manitoba.”

And I wasn’t aware I had any plans to leave, I think.

Derrick blinks. His smile doesn’t waver. “Ah, yes. Winnipeg. I remember now. Let me show you your journey from start to finish. Would you like to accompany me to a private carriage?”

My eyes dart to Carmine, whose mouth is pressed in a thin line, her eyes set on the floor by my feet. She doesn’t seem to have any advice on the matter, so I turn back to Derrick. “What, you can’t just tell me here?”

“It’s best if I show you.”

In the end, my curiosity — and my need to know what the hell is going on — outweighs the apprehension stirring up in my gut. I follow Derrick out of the room, trying and failing to catch Carmine’s eye over my shoulder. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she looked guilty.

The carriage door slides shut behind me with a hiss of air. My mouth is dry as I follow Derrick into the corridor of the coach, but my stinging eyes are grateful to be out from under the fluorescent lights. Instead, there is only a subtle blue glow ebbing from the edges of the identical white doors that line the walls on either side. The space between the bottoms of the doors and the runway appears to be sealed with accordion rubber. I half expect the runway to start swaying beneath me the moment I step onto it, but it remains still as concrete even as we begin to walk.

With impeccable posture and a gait like a wraith, Derrick leads me down the corridor until we reach a fork at the end. To my left and right are shallow platforms leading to doors marked with the acronym ILER. Straight ahead is another, bigger door that reads Delivery Room.

As if on cue, my stomach roils with nausea. I wrap an arm around my middle and my heart speeds up at the foreign feel of it, swollen and hardened around a growing human being. I’d never been pregnant before, and to think about how I may have gotten this way without remembering makes me feel like I’m plummeting from a great height.

“I sense you’re unsettled,” Derrick says, and finally his face sobers into something less cheery. “I want to assure you that a little amnesia is perfectly normal when you awake from the gas.”

I swallow and try to tamp down the bile rising in my throat. Derrick turns to the door on the left.

I clear my throat. “What’s ILER?”

“Immersive Learning Experience Room. These are special private carriages for guests who may need a refresher on all of the many amenities New North has to offer.”

I curl my nails into my palms. “I don’t care about amenities. I want to know where we’re going.”

“Of course,” says Derrick, and the door in front of him slides open without him having to use a key card, or biometrics, or a magic word. He seems to open and close doors with his mind. “Here we are. I’ll be right with you with an immersive map of your journey. Please, enjoy the complimentary entertainment provided while you wait.”

I pad into the room, and the door hisses shut behind me. It’s much like the carriage I was just in, but instead of the bunk beds, there’s a desk and chair in the centre of the room, facing a dais beneath a shuttered window. I move to sit in the chair, which is shaped like half of a hollowed-out egg and made of the same glowing plastic as the walls. A tablet extends from a compartment in the desk top, displaying pages upon pages of circular icons, each one depicting a different symbol or image. There’s a section at the top that reads Suggested For You, and I tap on the circle beneath it that appears to contain the outline of a pregnant belly.

The tablet chirps, and I jump as a woman materializes on the dais in front of me. She seems to blip from thin air, and I see that she is just faintly translucent. She, like Carmine, is extremely pregnant, and cradles her stomach as she begins to speak, her voice carrying just as it would if she were really in the room.

“What is a world without people to populate it?” she asks. “At New North, we make the most of our reproductive privileges to achieve our goal of fostering a new generation of human beings, far removed from the Earthling…”

I notice a new option that has appeared on the tablet, a larger, pulsing circle depicting the silhouette of a uterus. I tap it, and the holographic woman continues to speak as the tablet screen changes.

“…our advanced incubation technology, the number of pregnancies the average uterus can support throughout the lifespan has risen to over 60, with 50% shorter gestation and recovery times…”

Fertilization Stats, the screen reads. Please place your finger on the biometrics scanner.

I do, watching the green lasers glide back and forth beneath the glass, reading my fingerprint.

“…stress the importance of your role here in the incubation ward. By doing your part, you are keeping the human race alive and well as we continue to journey northbound to our final destination…”

The tablet beeps. A three-dimensional avatar of myself spins slowly on the left of the screen, while the right fills with statistics:

Name: Miriam

Successful Incubations: 12

Failed Incubations: 2

Time Remaining for Current Incubation: 57 days, 19 hours.

Time Until Refertilization: 237 days

“…at New North, we understand it may be hard to give up the infants you incubate. To make the process easier, we offer complimentary gas treatments during incubation to prevent emotional attachment. Treatments can range from thirty days…”

I’m still staring at that 12. And that 2.

I’m staring at the 57 days, 19 hours, and thinking of my barely-showing stomach, and how that could be possible.

“…the child moves from the incubation ward to our maturity ward, where we raise them as environment-focused individuals with full knowledge of Earthling mistakes, so their planet can avoid the same fate…”

I look up sharply at the holographic woman, expecting to hear more about the fate she’s referring to, but she dives into an explanation of all the many ways that New North “reconditions” their children.

I need to get off this train.

I don’t know which version of myself asked to be on this train, but that Miriam was out of her mind.

My heart is beating loudly in my ears as I jab the tablet’s stop button, and the holographic woman blips out of the room. I swipe my statistics away and look for something, anything, that can tell me where I am or where I’m going or how to get the hell off.

As I scroll through the many circular buttons, I find one displaying what appears to be a cityscape. I tap it and find hundreds upon hundreds of thumbnails of landscapes photos. There’s one of a sandy coastline, another of rolling highlands, a streak of cornfield, a twinkling city at night much like the one that was out my carriage window. I tap one of a sunset over an ocean, and the room fills with a whirring noise as the panel over the window slides open, filling the room with golden light.

The view is breathtaking. The sun bleeds over the horizon and slices the ocean into ribbons of gold. Wispy pink clouds limned in blazing orange spread across the sky, and sparkling waves lap at the side of the carriage window, as if the train has become a boat sailing lazily along.

Yet, despite how real it feels, I can stare right into that sun without the slightest urge to squint. I don’t feel the heat of the rays streaming into the room. There is no power behind that sun, no fire.

The real sun was not the watercolour painting before me. Its beauty was not soft like this. It was blinding and harsh. It didn’t sit harmlessly above oceans, but created them, drowning anything in their wake.

I remember now. I remember. If I weren’t sitting, my legs would pool beneath me and send me to my knees.

With a shaking hand, I scroll down to the very bottom of the thumbnails on the tablet, searching for the one I now know is there. It looks different than the rest — not a thumbnail, but a circle with a slash through it, the universal symbol for no, none, nothing, don’t do it.

I tap it, and the golden light vanishes. Outside the window, nothing but black sails by. There is no more veneer — nothing but the empty black of space as we continue hurtling on toward a destination my generation will never know.

What was the first rule of New North, Japan’s third bullet train to space?

If asked where you are from, you are to answer: the Old World.

From behind me comes Derrick’s voice. I didn’t hear him come in. “Miss Miriam, could you tell me where you’re from?”

“The Old World,” I whisper.

Derrick pauses. I imagine that information sinking into the microchip that is his brain. Then he says, “Thank you. I apologize for the early surfacing from your gas treatment. It seems I miscalculated the dosage, resulting in premature awakening and temporary amnesia. Would you like to return to your carriage and continue your treatment?”

I keep staring out into space. I think I see an asteroid hurtling by in the distance. I feel again that numbness that has been familiar to me since I was six years old, stepping onto this train for the first and last time.

Moments, hours, or perhaps lightyears later, I turn back to the carriage door. Derrick is still standing there, awaiting an answer, and I give him the same one that I always do.

“I’ll take the longest treatment you have to offer.”