Unnaturals (5 page)

"The FastNutritiousDelicious, Inc. serving device decided that I needed soup."

"Take a bite, it will do you good." He grinned. "It will make your teeth fall out like mine."

She looked at the chocolate with suspicion, then, in the same way, at him. "Is this a new wonderful experience, then? I am not sure I would like it. I don't usually like them." She carefully bit off a piece. "It is delicious."

"It sure is. Don't worry, child." The old man heard his voice grow kinder. "Your teeth won't fall off yet. And if they did,
they
would fix you up. If you wanted them to. If you were willing to pay the price for our perfect world."

"What is the price?" The girl looked at him again, and suddenly there was something in her eyes that stopped him from calling her a child again. "For some reason—Nicolas—I know that you're not talking about money. Did you pay the price? Is this why you look like this?"

"I didn't pay it, Meliora. I didn't—which is why I look like this."

"You're Nicolas' dad, aren't you?"

"No. I am Nicolas' granddad."

The girl's eyes widened. "Dad of the dad or the mom! But how? Nicolas must be seventeen years old. You should have disappeared long ago, when he was two, three at most!"

The girl stood, rushed towards him—for a moment he expected her to grab him by the elbows and shake him so hard that his arthritis would make him scream. She didn't. Children were polite these days, they didn't touch without permission.
People
were polite—beautiful and polite. She just stood before him, watching him as if shaking him with her eyes.

"Did you come back from the City of Death, Granddad Nicolas? Did they take your computer away? Did they close you off into your own mind? Is your body what happens when they do this? Tell me, Granddad Nicolas, is young Nicolas there? Is my dad? Because if they are, I must go and get them out!"

"Sit down, child," the old man sighed. "Eat your chocolate." She did, but her eyes kept on shaking him.

"You're not going there, do you hear me? You're not going there
yet.
And, gods be willing, my grandson is not there, either, and, gods be willing, neither is your dad."

"Gods?"

"Yes. I believe in the gods. I pray to them. The gods must exist. They must.
Someone
must stand above those who do this to us."

Mel

The creature—no, the man—started crying. He looked weak, Meliora suddenly knew, in addition to being so extremely ugly. His skin was as washed-out and shrunken as a leather purse put by a silly five-year-old girl into the wash. His eyes were almost invisible down there in their deep, misshapen holes—small, pale, watery eyes, surrounded by wrinkled, hanging skin and bushy eyebrows of a dull white color.

Some people had white hair, of course. People had all kinds of hair, whatever was fashionable. Mel had changed her own hair more times than she could count. But his white wasn't shiny, healthy, and living, it wasn't...natural. She hated herself for thinking of the word.

The man's shoulders were unnaturally hunched, his cheeks sunken, skin both wrinkled and taut over the sharp cheekbones. His limbs were unnaturally thin. Thinness, just like fatness, came and went in fashions, and it was as easy to flip from one to the other as it was to change the color of your hair—but somehow Mel felt that it wouldn't be easy for this man to become fat. He looked brittle, like a piece of the finest glass, one that you bought and must throw away almost immediately and buy a new one, because it shattered so fast.

She looked at the man with a new worry. You could not just buy a new man.

"Please don't cry, Nicolas." She decided it was now proper to get closer and pat his shoulder reassuringly. "Would you like your pills? Shall I call your medstat for you?"

"No!" the strange man shouted, then laughed through tears. "There is no such abomination in my home, Meliora."

"I'll call one from the shared homes..." But no, he wouldn't want that. So, something else must be done.

"I'll fix you up then, Granddad Nicolas."
Somehow I will figure it out.
"I'll be a doctor one day. Did you know that, many, many decades ago doctors used to cure disease? I understand now. I understand why my doc asked me to become a doc myself. Granddad Nicolas, before today I never understood what disease was, but I think that you must have one." The man was calm again, smiling vaguely.

"And so, it repeats. The young, eager, and ignorant would cure old age. But where does it lead from there? In whose hands does the power fall? For what purpose?"

He handed her a new chocolate. He also broke a piece off another chocolate bar and put it into his mouth. He had no teeth, so he sucked on it, the sound echoing in his big, empty home.

"Listen to me, Meliora-girl," he said. He sucked again. Mel felt it polite to bite off a piece of her own chocolate. It was the same as before, very delicious. Yet, in a way, she could not feel the taste. The man's brittle limbs were trembling and Mel noticed that, though hers looked very different from his, they were trembling, too.

"You asked for the truth, girl. The truth is I won't live much longer. I am a goner, as they say. Or used to say. You can't cure me. At this point, no one can. I chose it like this. And, my girl, there is no need to tell me how it was fifty years ago. I was there."

She took a deep breath. She let it out.

"And, my girl, I am not really Nicolas' granddad. I am his great-granddad. I saw them all go—my son, my daughter, her son, his daughter, even the little '
unnatural
' boy—all of them young, all of them beautiful. But the boy is alive. The boy must be alive still. The gods would have told me if he weren't. I am sure of it."

"You had a son
and
a daughter?"

"Does this sound to you like stuff from the fairytales?"

She nodded.

"Even fairytales, Meliora, hold bits of truth. It is not an easy thing to gather in one place, truth. Devious. Slippery."

He sucked on another chocolate piece, sprinkling saliva on his shirt. No serving device came to clean him up. Such a large home and so—empty. He remained silent, and she didn't dare to touch him or ask another question. He seemed as if he'd break if she did. She didn't dare to move from her seat at all.

"Two years from now you will be asked to go to a doctor for everyone's once-in-a-lifetime special doctor's examination and treatment," he said after many minutes had passed. It seemed like he found it hard to speak, like people coming out of the wonderful experiences.

"After this has passed, Meliora girl—unless you refuse it, like I did—your body will no longer seem to age. You will remain young and beautiful. And then, seventeen years from that date, give or take a few, young and beautiful, you will die."

He started coughing. She didn't dare to touch him, to give him juice or water. Besides, for some reason, right now she didn't dare trust her own hands.

"It is not a city, is it, Granddad Nicolas? Death." Her voice was but a whisper.

"The gods only know what it is, child. I'll know it soon enough. But I hope you won't know it for a long time yet."

"No," she said quietly. "I hope I will. It seems that I don't know nearly enough, about anything."

The man shrugged. His shoulders creaked, and he started coughing again.

"Listen, girl," he said after the coughing had passed. His voice was weaker now, he was breathing heavily. "This boy you have seen, my great-grandson, he left something. Computer things. I don't know what they are... Computers, damn them to the seven hells, are the reason for this blasted world! Machines—cold, emotionless, oh-so-wise machines—they brought us to this! I wouldn't have any of it. I would have had my wife give birth properly, too, but
she
wouldn't have any of
that.
She's been gone for twenty-eight years now, young and beautiful as any of them... Ah... Perhaps I'll see her again. The gods will let me. But will she know me in this withered shell..."

"Of course she will." Meliora was crying, without even knowing why. "Of course she will!"

"Ah, you're a kind child. Not just polite. Kind. Take the computer stuff. I hate to give it to you, for I think that it is more likely to bring you harm than good, but that boy left it for someone to find. Someone who'd know what to do with it."

"Where is he, Granddad Nicolas?"

"I don't know, child. Find him if you can."

"But where shall I start searching, Granddad Nicolas? Please tell me!"

Please tell me! You must know! You have been here for so long, you know so much! I want to ask you so much!
She didn't dare. He looked so tired, so very tired, almost asleep. She didn't believe, somehow she didn't believe, that he could say a word ever again.

"He mentioned something called
The City of Life,
" Granddad Nicolas whispered, barely. Then, "Good bye, Meliora-child."

He fell asleep and wouldn't wake up. For many hours, she just sat there and cried. Then she got up and found and took the only computer in the house. Through her own computer she messaged her frantic mom, then messaged the Annabellan doctor she'd met on the train. A doctor must know what to do with someone who had left for the City of Death.

Doctors

A woman and a man she didn't know took her back to Lucasta. The doctor from the train had sent them to her, they said. They also said that she'd been through an ordeal that no one should have to experience—that no, it wasn't like a wonderful experience in the mall. It was, and it wasn't. They said she needed their help.

She told them that she needed answers. They wouldn't give any.

"The doctors in Lucasta will talk to you."

She refused to take their pills. She didn't trust them—and it was sad, so sad to not be able to trust your new friends. Mom trusted people, at least most of the time.
People
trusted people—and people were happy. Happiness was a main ingredient of Lucasta, Annabella, and the rest.

But Mel knew about the City of Life and the City of Death, and she hated Lucasta and Annabella.

They put her on the train and boarded it with her, told her that now she'd sleep, and so would they.

She said, "No, I won't sleep."

They said, "All right."

They stayed awake, too. It made them very uncomfortable. The trip took hours, the train's wheels softly clattering in the semi-darkness of the intercity underground. They could use their computers, of course. Mel thought that if they could not, these two wouldn't have endured. The interweb connection was bad. At least, Mel knew it as a bad connection because of all the old articles she'd read. It took seconds, sometimes minutes to access a feed. Messages took the same time to come. Some messages came garbled, while others, she thought, didn't come at all.

Her guards' eyes were darting now towards their computers, now towards Meliora, now towards the barely-lit walls outside. Their shoulders were hunched, their hands white and tight on their computers.

Meliora hugged her knees and stared at the empty stone walls outside. So much stone in one place, covered by nothing. There truly
was
nothing to see. She closed her eyes.

"Yes," the woman said, "this is better. You don't have to look at it for the whole time."

Meliora's eyes jerked open at these words. Then, for a moment—just for a moment—she glimpsed a strange shadow flicker outside among the stones. A door, she was sure of it.

When she got out of the train in Lucasta, it was brightlights, and she looked at the ball in the sky. It hurt, so she looked away. She didn't want to damage her eyes. She didn't trust those who would repair them.

***

The man and the woman from Annabella left Meliora at her doctor's office. He wasn't there. A strange woman was in his place. Her hair was very black, even though blonde, bright red, and electric blue were currently in fashion. It was pulled back in an unfashionable tight bun. Her eyes were too narrow, her face too pale, her lips too thin.

When Mel looked closer, she realized that neither the eyes nor the lips were fixed like this; they were normal-sized but looked smaller because of the woman's facial muscles. Facial muscles were taught at school: how to better arrange them to have a more beautiful, happier smile because if people were happy, they smiled, and if people smiled happily, they became happy. It went both ways.

This woman looked as if she'd been taught how to be
un
happy. As if she'd passed through the mall's theater but hadn't gotten fixed up.

"What are you staring at!?"

Meliora hadn't heard that tone of voice for a long time. Parents and teachers would sometimes, if rarely, use it with a small child who said "
I want to pull the grass from the ground and throw it,
" or "
I want to kick the dog,
" or "
I want to hit my friend.
" Children could say things like this. Then, they outgrew them.

"I am staring at
you!
" Meliora snapped back. "It should be clear for anyone with eyes to see!" She didn't offer her name and interweb address.

"Well, stop staring. Go look into a mirror if you wish—because, silly girl, right now you look just like me."

Narrowed eyes, pursed lips, perhaps a pale face—Meliora's knuckles, at least, were pale white from squeezing her hands into fists, so why not the face, too? Yes, she could believe this.

"I am not like you," she said quietly.
She
didn't have tiny, barely noticeable lines cutting into her skin at the sides of her eyes and mouth. Neither did she have glasses—those over-the-eyes contraptions of frame and glass that sometimes became fashionable but currently weren't. "You're like Great-Granddad Nicolas—whoever, whatever you are. I am not. But, you're not nice like him."

"Hmph. Not that you're nice," the woman said. "I am Doctor Eryn 0x12A0A919, and you
shall
address me with respect."

It was an order. Mel knew this from the old feeds. No one gave orders today, and everyone addressed everyone with respect.