Orion's Locket

Orion idly fidgeted with the locket that lay on his chest. He had worn the simple gimmicky device for the better part of the last 5 years. Lucy had shown him the viral product that she found while scrolling her holos. It was a couple’s piece of jewelry that allowed you to faintly feel your partner’s heartbeat when worn. He remembered the day she had shown him as he pressed his thumb into the locket to create an imprint on his chest.

She had yelled at him to come check something out. He figured it would be another viral dance video, or something of the sort. The clearly sponsored holo showed the locket and Lucy exclaimed, “Isn’t that so cute?”

Of course, he wryly told her it was a silly viral product that was cheap and a clear gimmick. He believed that then, and still did now, but that did not stop him from surprising her with the lockets on their next anniversary. They’d worn the lockets ever since. He’d grown used to the faint secondary thrum against his own. Now that feeling was a phantom that he imagined sometimes, inciting a sort of excitement mixed with panic. Lucy had been frozen over a year ago.

Earth had been officially declared a dying planet shortly after they acquired the lockets, sometime in 2110. The mass exodus from humanity’s homeworld had been underway ever since. As of 2115, nearly every human in good standing with the global government had been shipped off to either the Mars colony or 6 light-years away to Barnard’s star b which was now dubbed, “New Earth.” The rich and the high-ranking officials of the government had been put on cutting-edge ships that were capable of FTL travel. Most people were on high-speed freighters that would arrive by 2250. They had to be put into a cryogenic fugue state to survive the exodus without aging. Orion was one of a few million still on Earth.

He stopped fidgeting with the silent locket on his chest and got dressed. There were things to be done today, his last day on Earth.

He was left with felons who did not qualify for relocation to the Mars colonies. Orion was not a felon. He was a simple man that kept mostly to himself and his wife. He had no children, no outstanding warrants, no debts, and worked for a small financial firm in New New York. Orion was one of an unlucky few who had a rare condition that now dictated his entire life. It was called Beadler’s condition, which was a rare genetic defect in the brain that normally had no effect whatsoever on the person who had it. The way this condition was discovered was when scientists had been perfecting the fugue state for space travel. They found that an extremely small number of individuals would not function despite a perfect execution of cryogenics. They would be “thawed” and their neurons would simply not fire. Individuals with this condition could not be frozen and expect to wake up. They could not engage in long-distance flight unless they were in an FTL ship, which were extremely expensive and equally rare.

He stepped into the street, now overrun with debris from latent rioting. It did not feel like home anymore. The sound of the legendary bustle of New New York had dwindled to a desperate-sounding thrum of a sad existence. He pulled out his phone and thumbed in his location into a rideshare app. He dare not walk through the streets of this once magnificent city any longer. Shortly thereafter, his ride showed up. A grizzled-looking individual who smelled vaguely of whiskey and cigarettes rolled down his window and simply asked, “Orion?”

Orion simply nodded and got in the vehicle. There was no small talk and no banter. The attitudes of these individuals reflected the state of the world. Simply dead.

He looked out the window as they passed skyscrapers, old and new. He felt alone. He was one of a few thousand in New New York. His friends had left towards the beginning of the exodus, and now that Lucy was gone, he had nobody. The remaining safe zones on Earth were dwindling in quality, and with only a few enforcers left to regulate the crime, they were outnumbered. Chaos reigned around him. Desperation and depravity swept Earth’s remaining inhabitants. Riots raged and infrastructure collapsed. Lucy had stayed as long as she could with him. She left just over a year ago, after the riots that burned the entire west coast safe zone bubble to dust. She wore her locket, and he was there when she went under. He gazed into her frozen visage as he felt her heart which beat atop his own slow to a stop. He wasn’t bitter, in fact, he was the one that urged her to go and live. Earth was no place for her beauty. Not any longer, at least. She anguished over the decision but eventually decided it was best. He was glad about that and he felt fulfilled knowing that she would live. He still felt empty inside.

He did not have many options. He could relocate to Mars, but overpopulation and crime ran rampant there. It was a desolate planet made habitable only via terraforming and artificial atmospheric bubbles. He couldn’t afford FTL travel and even if he could, those ships had long since left with the rich and important. For the better part of a year since she left, he was at a loss. However, with a few of his connections and the remaining sum of his assets, he had come across an opportunity and a decision.

The taxi screeched to a halt as a drunken vagrant yelled obscenities at them while standing in the middle of the street. With a quick and heated exchange with the driver, the man walked away, cursing their existence as well as his own. That felt like home, at least.

Another abrupt stop and a sigh from the driver found Orion at his destination. He stepped out and found himself in a line that spanned the length of a football field. Before him stood a massive modern structure that was fenced off with chain-link topped with barbed wire. The front of the building was not labeled with script but marked with a logo of a cartoon rocket ship soaring on the outskirts of a cartoon Milky Way. He waited patiently in line, as he was not in any particular rush.

When he arrived at the front of the line, there was a mountain of paperwork to sign, credit chit scans, and a whole mess of bureaucratic nonsense that he would have normally complained about. He was not feeling like his old argumentative self today. He patiently worked through all the hoops, while others made conversation with one another about their prospective new lives. Others argued with the workers, some interactions escalated to violence, and armored enforcers escorted those people out of the building. One man was on his knees, pleading to an unmoved face behind a kiosk. Apparently his background check didn’t turn out so well. He pleaded and cried all the way out of the building despite his detainment by a mountain of a man wearing an enforcer’s uniform. Orion felt sorry for him.

Finally, Orion stepped through a field of sanitation stations, and bio-scanners. He was made to strip fully naked but refused to discard his locket except for when an enforcer checked to make sure it wasn’t some sort of mini explosive device. The medical worker recognized the style of locket and returned it to him, shunning the enforcer for living under a rock. He began to feel his palms sweating as he approached the final station. He had been guaranteed passage by his contact, but his anxious mind ran rampant with the slew of possible scenarios that could deny him this final courtesy. He suppressed those thoughts actively as he approached.

“Orion, I presume?” The kind-faced technician asked as he stood at the counter, nearly dripping with sweat.

“Yes, is there any problem?” His contact had guaranteed that everything would go smoothly but neglected to give any details on what exactly the check would be like. He started, “I-”

She must have seen the immediate panic in his face because she put her hand up and stopped him before he could start rambling. “Don’t worry, our mutual friend told me about your situation. I’ve just got to run the scan anyways,” She said calmly. After punching some keys and gesturing for him to put his hand in the scanner, she looked up at him and said “I know that you seem to have made up your mind, spent away your whole life to get here too. I guess credits don’t mean much to a dead man but are you sure about this?” He put his hand in the scanner, and some meaningless words appeared on the holo before her. He saw the word “WARNING” highlighted in red, but with a few keystrokes, she made it disappear.

After a moment, he nodded, “I understand, and this is my choice. I’ve labored over this decision since…” He paused, trying to find the right words for this stranger as he grasped the locket once more without realizing. He started again, “…for a long time now.”

The technician said nothing, but he felt her gaze upon his locket, his only article of clothing now. She sighed and nodded her head, “Well, I suppose if you want to die so bad, who am I to stop you.” She chortled nervously, trying to avoid eye contact with him.

He could do nothing but smile politely as if his request wasn’t as insane as it clearly was. He had no misgivings about his decision. As far as he could decide, this was the only decision left for him. He would die here or die on Mars, or almost certainly die coming out of fugue.

She gestured him towards a platform with a giant pod, with a glossy face of glass. She did one final check of his vitals and gave him the signal to go on ahead.

Orion stepped into the pod, naked beside the heart-shaped locket that he still wore. The technician looked as though she wanted to confirm once more before she began the process. One look into Orion’s face and she halted. She sighed and muttered, “Godspeed.” and hit the button to engage the locks.

With a hiss, Orion was flash-frozen. He felt the beating of his own heart slow to a low thrum in his chest. His last thought was of Lucy, hoping he would somehow see her again.

Thump… Thump… Thump…

Lucy tapped her foot anxiously against a white tiled floor. “That’s a terrible habit, you know,” he would always tell her. She smiled idly at the memory but didn’t cease her movement. She never did when he had called her out, either. She had been sitting there for hours. The initial anxiety and fear had subsided, now she simply tapped away. It was all she could do and she had accepted that. She had lived on New Earth for just over 50 years and was now 81. Old by outdated standards, but with modern medicine and aging treatments, looked to be around 50. Not for the first time, she clutched the locket that she still wore. Her heart nearly stopped itself, and she wore what Orion used to refer to as a “shit-eating grin” while tears flowed freely down her face.

Thump… Thump… Thump…