Liminal Wake Chapter 4: Flex (Part 1)
Five Weeks Ago
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4. Flex
Five weeks ago
Bennett leaned back in his chair, feeling the gentle warmth of early April stream through the window onto his neck. “So, you mean to tell me you have no input whatsoever on the new levy for the Loop?” He raised his sizeable eyebrows, his tone almost incriminating. His interviewee did not so much as flinch.
Joel McMillan was his favorite source for reporting on Seattle’s iconic megastructure. Joel was the polar opposite of a traditional lobbyist or government apparatchik, and for that reason it felt like he was speaking with a real person.
“Given how many times I’ve sat in this chair—what is it, twelve? Fourteen? Mr. Stillman, I thought maybe I’d finally get through that big, educated brain of yours. I don’t have the time or the patience to explain again that I’ve got no opinion on whether the levy goes up or down. If you want a position on that, ping the folks over at the Puget Interspecies Bioethics Board, or the friggin’ Council. The whole thing’s gotta come d—”
Bennett held up his hand to shush him and sighed, rolling his stylus between his fingers. He twisted his office chair to the side, eyeing Joel’s burnt orange plaid shirt and slightly overgrown beard once again. His shirts were always plaid.
“Look, it’s neither here nor there as far as this piece goes. I don’t have a position on this, either, believe it or not.”
“Well, you’re sort of paid to not have a position—”
“—No, I’m paid to not state my own position. Most of the time.”
Joel tilted forward and looked behind him to make sure the door was shut. “You don’t have a conviction on this—on the Loop—that you’d fight for? Really?”
“I don’t,” said Bennett, one hand drifting to his chin, rubbing at the stubble as it passed over his mouth. His thoughts drifted to his daughter, to the meeting set for tomorrow. Joel cared about societal ethics, he felt—not personal duty, not love. Those were separate standards of judgment.
He twiddled his stylus. “I’ve been covering this so long, I’ve heard every side, every angle. I’m either agnostic or just burnt out, and I’m not entirely sure which.”
“Might be two words for the same thing.” Joel folded his arms across his chest. “Have you thought about a vacation?”
Bennett guffawed. “Do you ever take a vacation, Joel?”
Joel cracked a grin. “I may or may not have a cabin in an undisclosed location.”
“Careful now,” said Bennett. “If that gets out, you’ll catch flak again for being a carpet-bagger. Still can’t take the heat of the PIT, eh?”
Joel looked comfortable in his flexible plastic-backed chair. Too comfortable. He shrugged. “Sometimes. I gotta get away from all this.” His hand gestured in a loop. “Life was slower in the Midwest. To be frank, it’s been an adjustment. But a man’s gotta rest, you know. If God did it, then we ought to, as well.”
“But you don’t think anyone deserves the Second Life before their eternal rest?” Bennett was poking the bear. He knew, because he’d done this dance with McMillan before.
Joel’s loose plaid shirt couldn’t disguise his body’s sudden tension. “You know that’s a lie, Mr. Stillman. There is no Second Life.”
“Says you.”
“Says a lot of people a whole lot smarter than either of us,” Joel scoffed. “Heck, if you look up the Bioethics Board’s official statement on this, even they say these people are simply dying. We used to watch lions tear humans apart in the Colosseum. Nothing’s changed, really, except we have a new species of innocent to eviscerate for our public enjoyment.”
“Joel, ‘innocents’ is a pretty melodramatic way to refer to the Nots,” said Bennett.
“‘Nots’ is a propagandistic and derogatory term. Even the scientific name, absentis liminalis, implies a supposed ‘absence.’ It’s conspiracy, but we’re stuck with it now. As for innocence, you tell me: what did they do to deserve the Loop?”
“What did the cow do to deserve being made into my burger?”
Joel’s eyes ignited, and his body stiffened. “That’s prevaricating bullshit.”
Bennett imagined a right hook swinging toward him across the desk. He turned his chair to face his interviewee directly and cleared his throat, one open palm apologetic. “Whoa. No need for that, McMillan. I’m jerking your chain a little. Like I said. Agnostic.”
Joel relaxed. “‘Apathetic’ sounds like a better fit.”
“I’m the writer. Why don’t you let me handle the word choice,” said Bennett, spreading his hands.
Joel gave a capitulatory grunt. “See you for the next one, I guess.” He pushed his chair back to leave the small, bright interview room leased from the regional company RightSpace by The Seattle Mirror.
Bennett got up, too, letting his bionic leg thump heavily onto the thinly carpeted floor. Joel eyed the slightly irregular shape beneath his right pant leg, where his calf should be.
“I get it,” he offered, tone subdued.
The writer lifted an eyebrow. “You do, do you? You understand that this whole system relies on recycling biotech like mine, and that the Loop is far and away the most efficient way to do it?”
“It’s only efficient if you kill people well before their natural deaths.”
“If they decide it’s their time to leave, then it’s their time. How can you argue with that?”
Joel crossed his arms again. “So, you don’t argue that they’re dying. They’re not going to the ‘Second Life.’”
“I’m only saying the system works, Joel, and nobody’s being forced into anything.”
“Not forced, but certainly nudged. Shoved, even,” Joel retorted. “When the rhodium runs low, suddenly fifty-seven is a ‘full life.’ When recycling plants need repairs, when the kinds of supply of finished bionics don’t match the real demand, then blindness or incontinence is painted as unbearable agony that can only be solved with sui—”
“Mr. McMillan,” snapped Bennett. “Please stop. I’ve heard this all before. I have your quotes already.”
“Stillman, the rate of loops is increasing. But our invalid population is stable. You don’t see that as alarming?”
Bennett jerked his head in irritation. “Plenty of reasonable explanations have been offered—”
“My point is, it isn’t right,” cut in Joel. “It’s exploitive, manipulative. It’s got to come down. We’ll find better ways.” He opened the door, paused as if to reset his attitude. “Say, why don’t you just phone or video call me for these things?”
Bennett tucked his stylus in his breast pocket and reached for his ballcap. “In person you get to see people’s full affect. You can’t get that on videochat. Plus, filters and avatars sometimes screw with it, and it’s awkward to ask people to remove them… Also, it’s much harder to storm out of a tiny room in RightSpace than it is to hang up. That means I get more play time.”
Joel nodded, glancing around the plain white interior of the office space. “Maybe next time we grab a beer, though. This place is depressing. First one’s on me.”
Bennett hid his surprise poorly. “Uh, yeah. I wouldn’t pass up a beer.”
Joel patted the doorframe and started down the hallway.
“You know, they used to flood the Colosseum,” said Bennett.
Joel stopped and turned his head. “What’s that?”
“They used to flood it up to five feet. For fake naval battles, synchronized dancing. Stuff like that.”
The activist grinned and kept walking. He already knew that.
— · —
Bennett hung up his workbag and hat in the half-kempt entryway of his old Queen Anne home. He ruffled his overgrown black hair to air it out as he walked down the hall, then knocked gently on his daughter’s bedroom door. She’d covered it in cheeky stickers against Bennett’s meek protest, as thirteen-year-olds often do. “Char, I’m home. Can I come in and we’ll talk about dinner ideas?”
“Enter,” came the sleepy voice, and Bennett sat on the corner of the bed in the darkened room, careful to step over the bulky oxygen machine and its cords, and leaned his hand onto the folded patchwork quilt that lay across the foot of the bed. Charlotte sat herself up and rubbed her eyes, tapping the base of her jumping-salmon-shaped novelty lamp beside her bed to turn it on. She coughed into her elbow.
“Bit tired today?” asked Bennett as he rose to push the window shades up.
She nodded. “I’m hungry, though.”
“Did you eat anything at school?” He returned to his spot on the corner of the bed.
“No.”
He sighed. “Punk’, you know you have to eat.”
“I just listen to my body and it’s telling me not to eat. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when you’re sick?”
“That’s when you have a cold or a stomach bug. Stuff like that.” He tore his eyes away from her thin pale form to glance at the floor.
“Chronic illness doesn’t count, then,” she said dryly, not a little like her late mother.
She took a drink from the giant water bottle on the nightstand. Bennett had the urge to ask when the last time was that she cleaned it, but thought better of it.
“Dinner?” she inquired again.
“That’s my girl,” he smiled, giving her shin beneath the covers an encouraging squeeze.
Bennett cooked up some macaroni and cheese with sausage. They bickered over whether or not to include broccoli. In the end, Charlotte won out and he dumped it in.
Bennett slid the bowls to the breakfast bar and they sat down. Charlotte began shoveling in the pasta like she hadn’t eaten in days, barely chewing it. He watched as the digits on her O2 saturation monitor, clipped to her waistband, ticked downward: ninety-five, ninety-four, ninety-three.
“Hey, slow down there,” he said, trying not to sound alarmed. The monitor would beep if she was falling into severe hypoxia. “Breathe, Punk. Didn’t we teach you to chew food when you were like six months old?”
She brought another orange mound to her lips and rolled her eyes.
He set his fork down, ignoring the attitude. “Char, I have to go out of town for a meeting tomorrow. I won’t be back ‘til late. Your grandpa’s going to come hang out with you after school and make you dinner, okay?”
Charlotte nodded, her dark brown hair nearly falling into the cheese sauce as she resumed her meal. She pushed it out of the way absentmindedly.
“I can braid that,” he offered.
She eyed him sideways. “I am way too old for you to be braiding my hair, Dad,” she said around a mouthful of broccoli.
“You used to let me braid it all the time,” he replied. Then, jokingly: “Heck, I can probably find those little bows I used.”
“That was only because Mom was bad at braiding.”
“I was only teasing, Char. Do kids these days not know what teasing is?”
She snorted. “Kids tease, but it’s much meaner than anything you could muster.”
Charlotte had been refining her delivery of back-handed and passive aggressive comments for several months, so Bennett wasn’t totally surprised. He merely puffed his chest out and said facetiously, “Excuse me, miss. I am a writer. I’m as merciless as they come.”
She interrupted as soon as she finished swallowing, smiling. “Don’t tell me, ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’”
“Well,” he started, thinking this might be a teachable moment.
“Pshsh. No, Dad. It is not. I’ve seen streamers hit harder than any journalist.”
He dropped the matter, and tried to remind himself that it’s common for teens to put down their parents’ occupations. It wasn’t about his work in particular. It was about her current awe for the online world of mega-streamers who make their money by punching each other down with vicious wit and private investigations into one another’s personal lives. Kids’ inspirations came and went. It could be worse.
Still, the moodiness, the boundary-pushing, the occasional duplicity. It was hard. What surprised him was that those things weren’t as hard as leaving behind that little girl who cuddled under his arm and had her hair braided and wrote him misspelled poems and asked him to fly on an imaginary Pegasus with her.
He pushed down the nostalgia as he did a routine onceover on his bionic leg before bed, and turned his thoughts to work instead. Not his work at The Mirror. His work for Charlotte’s future.
— · —
Find Part 2 of Chapter 4 here.
If you’d like to read the rest of Liminal Wake (Book One of the Loop Duology) it’s available on Amazon in all formats. Book Two, Oblivion’s Reach, will release in August.