Don’t Worry!

Halfway through delivering the eulogy at his mother’s virtual funeral service, Jack realized that the few dozen attendees present were exclusively artificial mourners generated by the mortuary parlour. She had been the black sheep of her family long before he’d been born, and they’d grown distant in the decade since he’d finished Education and started Occupation, but he had expected at least a few of her friends or neighbors to show up.

Hot prickles of embarrassment and misplaced anger started to turn Jack’s face red as he paused mid-speech, but his Regulators set to work. Before the heightened emotions could coalesce, nanobots flooded his brain and body with the cocktail of neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, and hormones required to return him to Baseline, allowing him to calmly finish speaking. Just like the ubiquitous Public Service Announcements were constantly reminding everyone: Don’t Worry! No one had needed to worry about anything for a long time.

Three days later, Jack found himself on a train to the city. He’d been summoned by his mother’s attorneys for the reading of her will and to collect her remains. He wasn’t sad, of course, there was nothing to worry about. He and his mother hadn’t been close since he’d started his Occupation, which was quite different than hers as an artist. Over the past half-decade she’d never responded to, or even opened, any of the messages he’d sent. Despite the circumstances, there was great comfort to be had knowing she was finally at peace, embraced by the UniverSoul.

Jack wasn’t worried. He was, however, hungry. The change in routine had made him absent-mindedly skip breakfast, a mid-level transgression of Public Advice, and had been skipping most Minimum Recommended Portions since the funeral, distracted, as he was, by thoughts of his impending trip. He could have purchased a ProCarb Bar on the train, but they were crumbly and bland. What he was truly craving was a tomato hot from his mother’s garden, or a stick of the spiced venison jerky she’d cure, or better yet, raspberries plucked fresh off the thorny brambles that grew wild behind the smoke-shed.

When Jack thought too hard about picking berries or running through his mother’s garden as a child, back when it had been just the two of them against the world, his heart would beat fast and a lump would appear in his throat, but he’d quickly Regulate back to Baseline. His fondest memories were of summers at the ramshackle fish camp. Those weeks in the woods by the lake had been the most exciting times in Jack’s young life, fueled by the perceived rebelliousness of being so far off the grid.

His mother’s body had, naturally, been Reclaimed, broken down to the molecular level so that her resources might benefit The Greater Good, but a portion of her carbon had been retained and pressed into a diamond LifeGem. The days when people had barbarically interred or burned the deceased were long in the past, but the human need to memorialize was strong. Displaying a bequeathed LifeGem carried some cachet. It let people know you had been important to someone, whatever that was worth. Jack hoped it would increase his eligibility for Companionship, or at least his appeal once on the rosters. He knew, however, that the true metrics of Matching were largely financial. Consistently lacking in that regard, he was optimistic that his inheritance would change things in big ways and rode the train to the city with a beaming smile.

To pass time on the trip, Jack perused the InfoFeed. Feeling emboldened by improving circumstances, he toggled preferences on his Reader until he could see bad news as well. Certain parts of the world were still cut-off from the Regulator-fortified global food supply. These places were known for conflict and violence, populated with overemotional, animalistic, instinct-driven people who were predictable only in their unpredictability.

Jack wondered if people in those rogue states and curtained-off peninsulas were like the Skinnies he’d seen on rare trips to the city. It was rude to use the pejorative term, of course, but it was such an apt descriptor for people who had gone off food and subsequently lost their minds that it stuck. The preferred euphemism was “DysRegulated Individual.” Skinnies staggering around were rare in small towns like Jack’s, where the community usually stepped in when people started to go astray. The closer one got to the population center of the megalopolis, though, the more common it was to see them.

Etiquette and common sense suggested ignoring those so afflicted, the same way the world at large ignored those places where Regulation had yet to be accepted. It wasn’t illegal to not eat, of course, but it was generally only a matter of time before any given Skinny caused some public scene severe enough to get picked up and sent for ReEducation and Nutrition. No one ever wanted to be a vector for one of these emotional outbursts, and so eye-contact or otherwise attracting the attention of a Skinny was best avoided, as a rule.

Jack felt good as he stepped out of the train station into the balmy late spring air. Trees blooming throughout the plaza exhaled floral notes that carried on the wind. As he oriented himself, a sudden gust plucked a cherry blossom from a branch and deposited it at his feet. Within a matter of seconds the flower began to turn brown, then black, before disappearing before his eyes as invisible ambient nanobots Reclaimed it at the molecular level. Eventually, all organic matter would be processed, along with any inorganic litter collected by the dog-sized janitorial robots who kept all public spaces spotlessly clean. Making his way to a side-street, Jack hopped into an autonomous RoboTaxi which sped him to his destination.

Emerging from the taxi, as he turned to close the cab’s door, Jack was startled to see a Skinny sitting on a bench across the street. She seemed to be about his age, though it was hard to tell. Something dangling around her neck glittered in the light, catching Jack’s attention, and before he knew it, he was staring into her tear-streaked eyes. Even at a distance, the look on her face so flustered him with unplaced familiarity that his Regulators maxed out as they returned him to Baseline.

Jack was still shaking slightly as he sat down across the desk from the lawyer, who was wearing a gold necklace with no fewer than six glimmering LifeGems on display. The attorney said that in times of loss it’s important to reflect on the infinite absorptive capacity of The UniverSoul and how those Reclaimed now knew a peace beyond even Regulation. Jack thanked him for the kind words.

He went on to say that Jack’s mother had been problematic in her community for some time, that she had been fined again and again for the size of her garden and repeatedly charged with “unauthorized hunting, fishing, or foraging.” Legal fees and assessed penalties had required liquidation of her primary residence and its contents two years earlier. Jack confirmed that her art, her remaining body of work, was gone.

The lawyer assured Jack that there had been no felonious criminality, but outbursts at public meetings had gotten her watchlisted. This had resulted in a Travel Restriction, Freedom of Speech Downgrade, and Communication Redlisting such that her attempts to contact Jack had been intercepted and prevented. This was for Jack’s best-interest, of course, to allow him to focus on his Occupation without risk of worrying.

“There was nothing you could have done,” the lawyer insisted, “She was very skilled at toeing the line, and they let her get away with it as long as they could before it became too much.” A tax assessor drone had found her unresponsive at the fish camp, which constituted the whole of her remaining real property, and the entirety of Jack’s inheritance.

Sitting in stunned silence for a moment, Jack’s stomach growled, awkwardly breaking the tension. “You need to eat, Jack,” said the lawyer, “It’s the only way you’re going to get through this.”

Jack wasn’t sure what this the man was referring to, but his head swam a little as he agreed to not worry. He found himself signing some papers, then accepting a diamond on a silver chain. The lawyer shook his hand and Jack staggered his way back onto the street, holding a folder containing a death certificate and a deed, with the last of his mother dangling around his neck.

For years he’d thought that her out-of-step-with-the-world, march-to-her-own-drummer artist’s way of living had driven the wedge between them. It was a lot to process and Jack was starving. The fresh air helped clear his head and, drawing in great breaths, he noticed the visibly DysRegulated woman was still on the bench across the street. Feeling uncharacteristically weak and woozy enough to ignore his better judgment, he crossed the street to sit next to her. A RoboTaxi whizzing by nearly clipped him. For some reason this seemed to greatly upset the woman, and by the time he perched down the bench from her with some space between them, she was openly weeping. Jack scanned the air for drones.

Perhaps it was the shock of the lawyer’s revelations or the LifeGem around his neck, but Jack was feeling not-quite himself. Against all good judgement, he turned directly to the woman, noticing that the object glittering on a string around her neck seemed to be cut from the reflective wrapper of a ProCarb Bar. He also saw that her hands were scratched up and scabby.

“I just lost my mom,” said Jack, surprised with himself, “Did you lose someone, too?” This caused the woman to sob. Jack again scanned the air.

Catching her breath, the woman responded, “My little brother.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jack, not knowing what else to say. The woman smiled and nodded and said she was sorry, too.

Jack went on to say that for a long time he’d thought his mom was a nut, or that he’d disappointed her, but he’d just found out none of that was true. He said that maybe he was just hungry, but he was upset with how they lied about things and how easy they made it to distract yourself instead of focusing on what’s really important. He finished by belatedly introducing himself.

The woman said her name was Jill and that her little brother had been hit by a RoboTaxi three months earlier. She explained that the autonomous vehicle had not stopped, and that by the time she’d reached where her brother was laying in the street, he was already turning black and starting to dissolve. She’d not had time to call for help or do anything before the ambient nanobots had set to work Reclaiming him. Before she knew it, she said, he was gone and she was clutching only his clothes in her arms.

There had been no inquiry or investigation. His school had sent delinquency violations, but no one had ever come to their flat. She said it had been just her and him against the world since they’d lost their parents, and she’d become so overtaken by grief that she’d all but stopped eating. She’d been unable to think about anything other than how a person that had constituted so much of her world was not just gone, but erased, as if he’d never existed. She said she’d made the faux LifeGem so that others would have some inkling of her loss.

Jack’s stomach gurgled loudly, and he began to blush, but his Regulators kicked in before he could grow too red. “Come with me,” said Jill, rising from the bench. She led him down streets and across a boulevard into a large park, the kind with dirt underfoot. They wound among the trees until they stood before a great brambly patch of raspberries in a sun-dappled glade.

Squirrels gathered in the trees nearby chittered at them as they picked berries and stuffed their faces until red juice ran down their chins. Jack realized the scabs on Jill’s hands were bite-marks and understood the arboreal rodents’ animosity. Registering his revelation, Jill explained that she’d cook them at home, she just didn’t like being there alone. “I’m not trying to starve myself,” she said, adding “Don’t worry.”

Jill said she felt like she couldn’t stay in the city, and that her Occupation had lost all meaning, but there was nowhere she could go. An idea began to form in Jack’s mind, but he was sure it was madness. The berries had sated his hunger some, but still his head swam with the swirling, unfamiliar emotions. He didn’t know this woman, but who did he really know? What did he do with his time? To what was he really connected? He’d never considered such things before, and was dismayed to find that he had no answers other than the soft platitudes he’d been fed by DataScreen and InfoFeed as long as he could remember. He was suddenly terribly worried that he’d missed out on more than an opportunity to have a better relationship with his mom, that he’d somehow let something important slip by him. He couldn’t say if it was the grief-stricken woman or the sweetness of the raspberries, which had transported him back to days at the fish camp, but he felt awake and afraid for the first time.

This must be madness, thought Jack. There were so many things to consider: Travel Restrictions, loss of income, limited opportunities for Occupations, taxes that would eventually be due on the fish camp. The fact that they were strangers seemed to be the least of it, but still must matter. With shaking hands, Jack withdrew the deed from the folder and said, “Don’t worry.”