But she’s not here.
In this room at the bottom of the sea, surrounded by billions of people depending on me to die for them, I am on my own.
Not-Kay starts to rise, and my mind scrambles.
“You—” A string tightens from my belly to my throat, straining to fish up a feeling, a memory, a something, anything to stop her—“You never saw her die!”
Silence.
Stillness.
Then it starts. In her eyes. Emotion, spreading slow. She’s thinking that I shouldn’t know this. There’s no way I can, but apparently I do and it’s the truth: Kay never saw Celia die. This must be one of those learned memories she was talking about, something of my brain’s making, best suited to my circumstances, and it works, because after a moment, Kay sits back down, as if the strength has been stolen from her legs, and like a scale, strength tips back into mine. The bonds around my limbs weaken. Feeling prickles back into my skin, then freedom—a glorious rush—and before I can give my body permission, it rebels against its oppressor. My mutinous hands shove into Kay’s chest before either of us realizes what’s happening. She falls backward into the pod. I see her shell-shocked eyes there, then gone. I’ve heaved the lid shut.
But there’s blue goo on the ground, evidence of what I’ve done.
And the pod door is glowing with words:
POD-BREECH DETECTED.
POD-BREECH DETECTED.
SOLVENT WILL SUSTAIN ELECTRICAL BALANCE FOR 192 HR.
191 HR 59 MIN 59 S
191 HR 59 MIN 58 S
191 HR 59 MIN 57 S
And my heart is hammering. I could reverse this. I could open the pod. My heart is not my body my heart is not my body my heart—
Is broken. By the one I thought I loved.
So it joins my body on the goo-splattered ground and on my knees, I sob.
36
“GOOD WORK,” EKATERINA SAID AFTER the presentation. The message arrived in Kasey’s Intraface with a ding that must have reverberated in Actinium’s, too. Ever since the day on the pier, and more so after building the demo-bot together, their minds had felt connected, and as they parted at their respective ducts, his going down and hers up, she knew they were thinking the same thing.
Oh, what P2C didn’t know.
Yes, the solution was universal. Everyone could and would be put into stasis. Earth would clean itself, and be repopulated—by the ones who could be trusted not to ruin it again. As for everyone else? They could sleep on. Kasey and Actinium would ensure it. It was a simple bit of programming: a perma-lock command on the pod, activated by rank, or whatever empirical measure of planetary stewardship they decided upon. It wouldn’t kill those people—not in the same way they’d almost killed the rest of them, and might yet still if they were allowed to return.
But one thing at a time. First, Operation Reset needed to pass. Seven out of eight eco-cities currently supported it; eco-city 6 was still on the fence. Kasey didn’t blame them. It was one thing to ask your citizens to spend at least 33% of their waking moments in holo to save the world, and another to ask them to sacrifice even more to protect the people who hadn’t.
Meanwhile, the outside territories were much more divided. Delegates from Territories 6, 7, and 11 had pledged themselves to the solution; they’d also charted the highest percentage dead. Territories 1 and 12, on the other hand, mostly unscathed by the megaquake, had pledged zero. Human selfishness at its best. Kasey committed those territories to memory. Info like this could be factored into calculations of who deserved to wake and who, for the sake of everyone else, was better left in stasis.
Granted, they’d all suffer if selfishness prevailed. The solution required a 100% participation rate or none at all. Governments would rather let their people die than fall behind. The deadline for a consensus was just a week away, and with only 57% delegates pledged despite Kasey’s presentations and P2C’s broader maneuvers, Kasey had no idea what else might help.
Ekaterina did. At night, she messaged again, asking if Kasey was willing to present in Territory 4 tomorrow—in person. “You wouldn’t be exposed,” Ekaterina was quick to mention. “But to make inroads among some of these territories, we’re going to have to establish more of a human connection.”
Of course, Kasey thought into her Intraface messaging app, transmitted it, then looked to the night sky beyond the polyglass. She was in the Coles’ unit, sitting on one of their chaises. As her biomonitor reminded her this morning, it was the seventh anniversary of their passing. Seven years since the day Celia had sobbed in her room, and Kasey had violated her brain by trying to cancel her pain. Correlated or not, Celia had spent the next two anniversaries alone. It was only after Kasey committed her second violation by trying to rebuild their mom that Celia stopped avoiding her. Together, they’d gone to the Coles’ unit; Kasey had watched as Celia dusted off the picture of Ester, Frain, and their boy on the coffee table before filling the vase with everfiber flowers. The gesture seemed wasted on the dead, but when Celia did it, it felt right in a way Kasey couldn’t emulate. So tonight, Kasey had come empty-handed. She wasn’t her sister. Wasn’t persuasive or likeable enough.