Unnaturals (3 page)

Some tales said that dying was going to a place where white-clad children played music and sang. Mel wondered. Didn't they have musicstats in Death or even normal computers—and how could children play music, anyway? Mel had examined both musicstats and computers. Musicstats had better hardware for music than computers, but whatever their differences, they both had hardware children lacked.

Other tales mentioned Death as a place where grown men went to drink and hunt.
Hunting,
as Mel understood it, was people going to find food. It sounded like a supermarket. Mel could not imagine Nicolas going to the Death where children played—and how long could a boy spend in a supermarket? A day, two at most, if he wanted to eat several times before he chose what to buy. A few more, if he forgot what he wanted, or if he took a nap in the supermarket's hotel.

Mel had a feeling that Nicolas wouldn't forget anything. He must be back soon.

Yet, time passed, a long time, and the boy didn't return in the interweb. He never replied to Mel's messages, never again posted on his feed. She couldn't break into his private message box, either, though she could break into anyone else's. Not that she cared to break into other people's message boxes, except for Mom's. People's messages were boring. Mom's were, too—but Mel had a responsibility for Mom. She had to care for her, to make sure Mom was happy, and checking her messages was a part of it. Mom still missed Dad. Mel knew it though Mom would never, ever say it. It was unnatural. Natural people didn't miss their mates like this, and Mel was better at being unnatural than Mom was, so she thought she must care for both of them.

Mel had feeling that Nicolas's message box could be interesting, but she never got access to it. It was as if he just...didn't exist any more. She found some of his friends through the feeds. They hadn't seen him or heard from him, they said. Those who remembered him at all. By the time she wrote to them, most had forgotten him.

When Mel turned fifteen, she went to Nicolas' city. She had to be at least fifteen in order to leave her own city and then come back. Nicolas must have been about fifteen when she met him, seventeen now.

There weren't many other cities. Three of them, to be precise. The old articles mentioned more, but in school the teachers said three and insisted on three. This was the truth, they said, the real truth.

At fifteen, people graduated from school. They became adults, and they could travel. The morning after graduation, Mel went to her neighborhood train station and bought a ticket to Annabella City.

She started on a normal Lucastan underground train. She used them sometimes, especially if she wanted to be late for school. She was too punctual if she rode her bicycle through the mostly empty long-distance bike lanes. The short-distance ones were usually filled with kids out there for obligatory sports, but for longer distances, such as the one-mile distance to school, people preferred the trains.

The trains were slow. They had a schedule but it was a guideline, not a rule. No one was supposed to be on time in Lucasta. Punctuality had only been expected eighty years ago or earlier. Now it was
natural
to be late. And why not? The wagons were large and brightly lit, the seats red or blue or green, upholstered with the logo of whoever was the sponsor this week. The musicstats played tones even crisper than at home. People talked to other people on the train, communicated on the interweb, slept, shopped, ate the good food—people felt comfortable.

At least, naturals did.

At Lucasta's main station, where Meliora was about to transfer to the train to Annabella, she was told that she'd be even more comfortable than that.

"You will be asleep all the time, dear, dreaming the best kind of dreams," the beautiful woman at the door to the intercity terminal said. "Isn't that lovely?"

"But I want to be awake and see the scenery," Mel said.

"There is no scenery, dear. The beautiful pictures on the underground walls and the great movies you see there only exist in cities. There is nothing on the walls out
there,
dear." She said
there
as if the word was giving her one of the wonderful experiences of the GreatLifeExperiences, Inc. theater.

"Well, if it is so exciting, I certainly want to see it," Mel said.

"There is
nothing,
dear. But there will be fun excitement in your dreams, of course."

"And who are you to tell me what is and what isn't out there—or
anywhere!
," Mel suddenly shouted. The woman jumped back. "I won't sleep! I don't want to sleep! I am tired of pretending to sleep! Am I not an adult now!? Have I not graduated and earned my trip to a new city!? I want to see what there is when there is no city at all!"

"Walls, dear," the woman said softly. "Now shall we get your pills, dear? Wait just a tiny moment, dear..."

"I won't wait!" Mel grabbed the pills from the woman's hand and thrust them into the wall. The packaging broke. The pills spilled on the spotless floor. "I am tired of waiting for you people, of slowing down for you, of
pretending
for you! Why are
you
normal, and
I
unnatural!?"

The woman was crying now, snot trickling down her smooth white face while she hummed, hiccuping into her microphone. Another woman came, a man with her. The new woman reached towards Meliora, and Mel shoved her in the chest.

***

She woke up in a room she remembered, and her eyes fell on a man with a familiar face.

"Hello, Doc," Mel said.

"Ah, young lady. You're awake, and everything is fine. You may go home."

He smiled at her, then of course looked away. He wasn't humming into his microphone, but Mel had watched people for a long time without people caring to watch her. She knew he was interacting with his computer in some way.

"What is this, Doc, a new interface? I know doctors get them before the rest of us."

"Ah, so you noticed. Of course you would..." He looked at her briefly, then smiled in the direction of one of the walls. "Thoughtmotion interface, young lady. Thoughts and emotions. Better than our music. Better than our humming, I should say. People don't play
music.
Machines do."

"How about Death?"

"What!?"

"Children playing music, in Death. Death is a city, I suppose. Or was. What happened to the cities that the articles of decades ago mention, Doc? They mention more than four cities, but the teachers are vehement about what the truth is today. What is
truth,
Doc? I know it changes all the time. If I go and write, right now, that Death City still exists, will it exist, Doc?"

The doctor had become pale.

"Oh, doc, it is all right, I am sorry! Wait a moment, I'll get you your pills, just a moment. Medstat!"

The machine wheeled towards her.

Pallor,
she was going to say but didn't need to. The medstat had already dispensed the familiar pills. Mom took them often. Mom became pale often, especially after she heard Meliora say something unnatural. The doctor stared at his computer, then away, then at the computer again. She noticed he didn't have the many physical screens any more. Perhaps just one suited him better. Just one suited
her
better, but of course she'd used more when it was fashionable. Otherwise, someone might notice.

"Will the thoughts interface work better than the hummie, Doctor?" she said. "The hummie messes things up. I would think of something in my mind, but when I hum the message for my mom, she receives different text in her computer. The words she sees are more like something she would have said. Years ago, with the typing interfaces, or even with the speech ones, we used to send
our
words to our friends. Now the computers translate too much. I am wondering how they do this at all."

"Words are imperfect, young lady. Feelings are what is true—and what
will
be true. Words, on the other hand... Have you thought of what you want to do now that you're an adult, Mel?"

"
Whatever adults do,
" she'd have replied a day ago. "See a new city, find a mate, have a child created, have a job whenever the fashions deem it necessary, buy food for the child, take the child to school for the first time when the time comes." Now, she said nothing.

"What do you think of becoming a doctor?"

"Me? A doctor? Doc, in case you have forgotten, doctors are supposed to make people better, while
I
shoved a person into a wall today! Did it make her better, you think? Isn't there supposed to be...to be...punishment for me now?"

"Punishment?" He was genuinely puzzled. "What for?"

"I did something bad. There must be punishment for bad deeds. I feel guilty, Doc."

"You should not, Meliora. It helps no one, least of all you. As for punishment—you read too many old articles. Punishment is old. Doesn't work. Never did. Other things do."

"What things?"

He didn't answer. He must have become tired of talking for so long about something that wasn't a new computer or new pants. He was squeezing his computer now, eyes closed.

I could shove you even stronger than I shoved that woman
.

She didn't even know where this thought had come from, or why. It wasn't natural—and for the first time in her life, her own abnormality frightened her.

"Did you do this to me!?" Meliora screamed. "
What
did you do to me? Did you manage to finally give me your pills? Did you mess with my mind enough to make me hate myself!?"

"Hate? Yourself? Meliora, hate is not good. Hating anything, whatever it is, goes beyond unnatural. No one in Lucasta would ever do this to you. Lucasta wants you to be happy, Mel—the city doesn't want you to hate yourself or feel guilty, nothing like this. People have felt all these things, and they never did people anything good."

She believed him. Lucastans didn't lie.

"Mel, all we did was make you sleep and rest. Those pills wear off quickly. They have worn off already. You should message your mom now."

Mel had seventeen messages from her. Mom was worried and had no idea what had happened to Meliora. Three hours had passed since Mel took the first train, and she hadn't messaged about entering the sleeper. Mom would know about the sleeper-trains—but she wouldn't know about shoving.
It is all right, Mom,
Mel hummed.
I might be becoming a doctor.

Mom answered, partly appeased, but still the message showed worry. It was Mel's fault. Mel started crying.

"It is your pills. It is because of your pills! I never cry!"

There were no pills this time. The medstat approached her from behind and administered a shot. It didn't hurt. They were made so that they didn't hurt. Shots, like pills, were supposed to help people, not harm them.

It took away the guilt, too.

***

On the next day she took the sleeper-train to Annabella. She didn't dream. At least, she didn't remember dreaming.

At the station, one of Annabella's welcomers came to meet her. He was a pleasant boy a bit older than her, perhaps Nicolas' age. His name was Gilbert. She asked him about Nicolas. He smiled at her and said he didn't know him, then hummed something into his microphone.

Of course he didn't know Nicolas. A million people lived in Annabella, just like in Lucasta. They couldn't all know each other. You could know, what, two hundred or three hundred thousand people relatively well. She'd tracked the people who could know Nicolas and contacted them. It would make no difference that she was physically in Annabella now.

Meliora messaged her mother, messaged hundreds of her friends, told them she was in Annabella and excited about it.

Gilbert led her to a tourist train, which would go around Annabella's most beautiful and artistic underground areas. It was different from Lucasta, then. In Lucasta tourists were taken to see the most awesome underground advertisements.

The people on the train welcomed Meliora warmly. All two hundred tourists and their two hundred guides gave her their interweb addresses and sent her friendly messages. She replied back, promising she'd write often. This was normal with tourism. You made new friends. She asked them about Nicolas, and seven people vaguely remembered someone with his particular interweb address. They didn't know what had become of him.

"You know, what is it that happens to people, anyway?" Belinda24511 from the city of Clementina said as the train softly started on its way. "Have you noticed that once a person has been an adult for about as long as they have been a child, they stop writing in the interweb and can't be found at home, either?"

"They go to the city of Death," Meliora said before anyone else could utter a word or send a message, "which is the city of prisons. There people are closed into their own minds and can't access the feeds."

"What city is that?" someone else asked. "Is it a whole city that is a theater of wonderful experiences? We have a whole mall in Sylvanna that only does wonderful experiences now. You can
walk
in a snowstorm now, and even break your leg."

"Wow, break your leg! I had this at the theater in Clementina. But do you walk with the broken leg in the mall then? Can you buy stuff with the broken leg? It must be so interesting!"

"You can't walk with a broken leg, they have to carry you—and that is its own wonderful experience, especially if you buy the
hungry, emaciated, weak
one before that. Or the
war
one? Anyone tried war? It's like breaking your leg, but stronger. My wife had to take the relaxation pills and wouldn't repeat it for ten minutes!"

There was a doctor on the train. Before the conversation drifted away from Meliora's statement, she looked at Meliora as if she wanted to give her relaxation pills.

Meliora huddled into her soft seat, as if that would make her invisible. She didn't even know why she'd said that. She didn't know it for truth. She hadn't even read it anywhere. It had just come out. Like her shoving from before.