Pills and Starships Read online

  We had a little Personal Time on the plan before lunch, so I settled down in the living room of the suite with this journal while my parents put earbuds in and hooked up to their favorite music. Music’s a big part of Final Weeks, as you may have noticed. Normally they would have held hands doing that, they’ve always been pretty affectionate with each other, but I noticed that this time they just sat side by side on the couch, expressions peaceful and slack.

  Like holding hands would be too much work.

  We had the sliding doors to the balcony open, and a nice breeze swept in off the ocean and lifted the curtains.

  But then, while I was writing the section before this one, there came a knock on the door. I must have been the only one who heard it—Sam had earbuds in too and was listening to his own music in an armchair and jiggling one leg—so I got up to answer, passing Sam on my way. He didn’t glance up or take his earbuds off, maybe because he didn’t want to seem vigilant. Maybe they’ve put hidden cameras in the living room now too.

  And at the door, when I opened it, was Rory.

  He smiled and everything, as much as you can with a face like that. But it wasn’t a smile I liked, exactly.

  “Good morning, Nat,” he said. “Happy Goodbye Day. May I speak with your brother, please?”

  It wasn’t really a question.

  “Sure,” I said, casual and friendly. “Come in.”

  So Rory entered and walked over to Sam, whose chair happened to be facing the other way, toward the balcony looking out, and tapped him on the shoulder.

  Well, it was more like he grasped him on the shoulder.

  My parents had their eyes closed to the music and didn’t open them right away.

  Sam turned around, playing it cool, and looked up at Rory and took his earbuds out, one by one, very chill.

  “We need to have a little talk, Sam,” said Rory. “Just you and me. Man to man.”

  And then my mother did notice—I guess the sound of Rory’s voice filtered through her purple haze—and she sat up and took her own earpieces out, looking disoriented. And my father must have felt her movement on the sofa and opened his eyes and did the same.

  “I’ll talk to you, dude,” said Sam. “But you don’t have to be so bossy about it.” I guess he figured if he was too friendly that’d be suspicious also. In its own way.

  “I’m stealing your son for a minute,” said Rory, all smiles directed at Mom and Dad. “I’ll bring him right back, I promise.”

  “Oh, yes,” said my mom, but she was also shaking her head, kind of confused.

  “Nothing the matter, though,” said my dad. He might have meant it as a question but didn’t seem to have the energy to say it like that. The opposite of Rory, who said commands like he was asking politely.

  “No, no,” said Rory. “Just making sure we’re all on the same screen here.”

  “Where are you taking him?” I asked as they headed for the door. “Can I come with? I mean, shouldn’t I be on the same screen too?”

  “You’re fine. Sam and I are just going outside for a real quick powwow.”

  Powwow?

  I don’t think my Seminole ancestors would have liked Rory.

  The door closed behind the two of them.

  I stood there wondering if I should go after them. And then I thought, but why? In a fistfight between Rory and me, it’s pretty clear who would prevail. The guy must weigh like 150 kilos.

  Plus he had the whole corp on his side.

  But that felt gutless so I did run to the door and open it again, and I stuck my head out into the hall in time to see them disappear around a corner.

  “Nat! Nat,” said my mother, urgent at first and then trailing off. “Are you … doing something, honey?”

  “I was trying to see where he was taking Sam.”

  “Taking him out for a real quick powwow,” echoed my dad, nodding to himself slowly, bobblehead-style. “That’s all.”

  “Relax,” said my mom. “You want to listen? There’s extra earbuds there …”

  And they were already putting their earpieces back in.

  Just like that. They lay back, rested their heads, and closed their eyes again. In that second, I didn’t regret at all deceiving them.

  I wanted my real parents back. Or nothing.

  And maybe it would turn out that I couldn’t have them, I saw then. Maybe I’d end up with nothing. Because it struck me, with a shiver of recognition, that it was more than just this past couple of weeks, more than this trip. It was ever since they bought the contract a couple of months ago. Ever since then, they’d been a little bit different—a little more generic. As though someone had flipped a switch in them. And this was the most extreme I’d seen them, but in a way it made me see the subtler changes that had come before.

  Like when they told us about buying the contract, in the condo with Jean. I hadn’t heard them argue a single time since weeks before that. Maybe months. And my parents love each other a lot, but they’ve always fought now and then. I hadn’t heard my father tell an off-color joke, which he always liked to do. I hadn’t heard my mom swear. She was kind of a potty mouth, my mom. In bygone days.

  And I hadn’t heard them laugh, either. Not a real, raucous laugh. Of course, before I’d chalked that up to them being about to die.

  But now I’m not so sure.

  Whether I would ever see my real parents again or not, I knew—after they let Rory the man-mountain hustle Sam out of there and went right back to their music without so much as lifting an eyebrow—that if all there was left of them was these pale imitations, I’d have to take my chances.

  As it turned out Rory hadn’t been lying: he did bring Sam back, right before we had to go downstairs to eat. And Sam still had the same cocky-kid look he usually cultivated in Rory’s presence, so it must not have been too much of a torture session.

  Or so I thought till Sam went into his room, while my parents were freshening up at their sinkbowl, and I followed him.

  “He shot me up with a trank,” he rushed, under his breath. “It hasn’t set in yet but it should be about two minutes till that blood gets to my brain. So I’m going to be zoned really soon.”

  “He can’t do that! It’s in the rules! It has to be self-administered!”

  “Not if you’re a minor who goes off-plan,” said Sam. He was talking at high speed. “Fine print. What made them suspicious was me sticking my head into the waste room to talk to you—there’s cameras in that hall. But they don’t have anything solid. So you have to be extra normal this afternoon—and because I’m going to be tranking soon you need to have my back. There may have been some kind of sodium pentothal pharm in the needle—like, truth serum. So if I start talking weird, if I start talking a lot at all, dose me. I mean, knock me out. Use all the pills in my Coping Kit. There’s not enough to OD. Promise! Any sign of talking too much. Nat, promise me!”

  “But that could be dangerous, Sam! You mean over the max dosage?”

  “Screw the max. All the pills, Nat. Put me to sleep.”

  And he rummaged around in his kit and handed me a trank vial. It was still completely full.

  “I’m scared of it, Sam. There’s so much in it.”

  “Here’s the alternative—we miss our chance. Mom and Dad are gone for sure and who knows what happens to the camp and the animals. And those little kids? We go back home, if you can call it that—I don’t—and we can never come back.”

  The door opened and we jumped.

  “Nat? Sam? Are you ready for lunch, dears?” My mom stood in the doorway.

  Sam was already getting a glazed look in his eyes. “Promise,” he said, softly.

  “Okay,” I said reluctantly. “I promise.”

  “Promise what, honey … ?” asked my mother.

  But she was turning away already, and we didn’t have to answer.

  And then we were leaving the suite, and Sam brought up the rear, walking slowly.

  Lunch was a major drag, with Sam drugged l
ike that. Rory must have given him a megadose, because five minutes after he gave me my instructions he lapsed into a stupor. He was silent and couldn’t hold his head upright and when he did say something it was slurred.

  It made me angry.

  And what was also frustrating was that my parents seemed not to see it. Or maybe they did see and just didn’t care, pharmazoned. I don’t know. It was strange to be the only one acknowledging that he was completely zomboid.

  At least he wasn’t talky during lunch. He picked at his food with no interest and stared down at his plate. At a certain point these wandering dudes with black and gold-braid outfits and big hats and pygmy guitars came up to our table; they were going around serenading the diners in a more or less embarrassing fashion and suddenly we were it.

  “Mariachis!” said my dad.

  “May we play a request, sir and madam?” they asked my parents.

  “Mmm, maybe ‘El Paso’?” suggested my dad. “The Marty Robbins classic?”

  “‘Black Diamond Bay’!” said my mother.

  So they stood there and strummed this song on their instruments and the main guy also sang—some kind of weird song about a volcano erupting and people gambling before the lava got to them. I would have thought my brother would like it but Sam didn’t even look up, just picked apart a circle of soylami into thumbnail-size fragments till it was shredded all over his plate like the aftermath of a bomb. He seemed completely absorbed in this deliberate, painfully slow process. And once I saw a line of drool string down from his lip onto the table edge.

  It was yuck. I felt really bad for him, that he was in this state and also that people were seeing him this way. But more than that, it scared me. Because it was hitting me just then, watching him, how serious the service corps must be. To grab a smart, energetic kid by force, stick a syringe into his arm, and make him into a zombie.

  They’re not kidding, I thought. But why do they need to get so hardcore?

  That’s what I was wondering as the musicians in the big hats crooned. “The dealer said, it’s too late now/You can take your money but I don’t know how/You’ll spend it in the tomb …” Meanwhile my parents were swaying and smiling slightly and coming off foolhardy.

  I was thinking, well, what if my parents were to back out of the contract at the last minute? How would it hurt the corp? I mean, people do it occasionally, and as far as I can tell they sacrifice all the cash they already paid—no refund at all except for funeral expenses—and then they usually go running back to the corps a few months later and pay for the whole deal again. So the corps shouldn’t mind at all, it seems to me.

  In fact they should practically be glad when that happens and they can double their money! I mean, sure, it creates disruptions for the group, when contracts suddenly back out—I’ve browsed some sites that say it can have a ripple effect among the other contracts doing Happiness that day. They get spooked, then unpsyched, and there’s a bit of a stampede. Away from the Bountiful Passing.

  But even in that case, the corp’s still making all its money, right? It’s not like they don’t get paid. So why do they care so much? Why do they want to be so sure my parents are going to die tomorrow, on schedule, that they decide they have to muscle into our room, shoot Sam up, and leave him there at a lunch table, in a public place with strangers looking at him, with spit hanging out of his mouth?

  Maybe contract pullouts look bad for the corporate image. I guess the bottom line comes down to image, for them.

  Still, I’d have to say a drooling survivor at a mariachi luncheon looks bad too.

  And also, when we’ve been told those stories in the past—the stories of contracts who reneged at the eleventh hour—they’re always told in a way that makes the contracts seem insecure and selfish, like by paying double out of fear they’re making things poorer for their survivors, and so they’re the ones with the disgrace. Not the corporates.

  Because contracts don’t come cheap.

  I don’t fully get it.

  We had to take Sam to the session like that, our private family session with LaT. He wasn’t drooling any­more, after we left the restaurant, but he was tripping over his feet as he walked, muttering under his breath. You couldn’t even understand what he was saying—a relief—but I was on high alert, because what if it was secrets he was telling? And what if he got louder and clearer? Pharma can come in waves sometimes, affecting the brain first one way, then another. He’d been quiet till then, but that didn’t make me confident.

  To spill the secrets in front of LaTessa, I figured, that would be the worst possible situation.

  So I kept close to him as we headed to the hearing room. I held one of his limp arms and walked beside him and I listened, through the hotel lobby, into the elevator, then down the twists and turns of lavender corridors, passing other contracts and family members as they navi­gated their own way through the maze.

  All striking me, for the first time, as total sleepwalkers.

  But what he was mumbling was all gibberish, as far as I could tell, and my parents, walking ahead of us with their arms around each other’s waists, didn’t seem to be paying any more attention to him now than they had when he was drooling over his lunchplate.

  We got there and sat down in a circle around the water feature, as directed. Sam was like a crazy person or a booze migrant, not looking up, doing little hand gestures to himself, little laughs, shit like that.

  LaT. came in, and her gown was even more arresting this time because it was whiter than white, like a bride—and it even had a very small train that wafted in the air behind her and didn’t seem to touch the floor. LaT., I have to say, could win an Aryan Princess Beauty Contest. She’s like that superthin olden doll with yellow hair, one of the famous toys they used to make from oil. When she sat down the dress settled around her in a filmy cloud.

  She must have been briefed by Rory, most likely she was in on the whole thing, because she didn’t even blink at Sam’s condition.

  “I want to wish you a happy, happy Goodbye Day,” she said first off. “Let us join hands and be.”

  We held hands, with me grabbing Sam’s, which was sweaty and trembling, and my father on his other side taking his other one. This was when we were supposed to bow our heads and close our eyes and meditate, but I just watched the others do it. With LaT.’s eyes closed, I noticed on her lids the weenciest bit of silvery eyeshadow.

  So LaT. was breaking the no-makeup-in-sessions rule. Huh.

  And Sam was still babbling to himself, but mostly it was silent, his lips moving, his head shaking back and forth, like no, no, no, like he was denying something constantly. I think he was trying to hold himself in check. I wondered how I was supposed to dose him now, in the middle of the session, if he got louder. I started to feel even more anxious.

  There was a waste room nearby, a couple of doors down the hall—could I get him there, if I had to? Would LaT. even let me?

  I was getting pretty majorly anxious; I was on the edge of my seat, or would have been if I’d had one.

  “And now, Robert and Sara,” she said to my parents, when the moment was apparently done, “I trust you’re feeling loving.”

  “Very,” said my mother—or, rather, the pharmazone impostor who had taken her over.

  “Express your perceiving,” said LaT. gently.

  My parents just looked at her and smiled.

  “I know,” said LaT. “Words escaping.”

  “It’s just … nice,” said my mother.

  “Nice,” echoed my dad.

  She wasn’t getting much from them, obviously. Pharmadrones. She smiled and nodded sympathetically and then she turned to me.

  “And you, Nat,” she serened. “Is there a beingness you feel like sharing?”

  “I guess so.” It seemed to me I should fill as much space as I could right then, so that Sam couldn’t fill any. “I guess my problem is, you know, we’re supposed to say goodbye today. And we’ve had all the training. Which I apprecia
te. And so none of this is unexpected, and I realize that. But still, my problem is I feel like I can’t really say goodbye. Because I believe they’ve already left. Before, we didn’t say goodbye because there was going to be time later. Now it’s later but I’m not sure who’s here to say goodbye to.”

  “You know, Nat,” said LaT., a little chiding, “your loving parents are being next to you, so closely. You can still be expressing to them.”

  “But I’m not sure it is them. It’s more their pharma that’s here, their pharms speaking through them. Not them speaking through their pharms. That would be fine, or at least I could take it. I’m used to it. But this is like their pharms have taken over. Don’t you know what I mean?”

  Of course, I didn’t really care if she knew what I meant, and I also already knew that she knew. I was talking emptily, just to hold onto the airwaves.

  “The selves of your parents,” explained LaT., “are fully whole, only ensconced in Happiness-promoting. A self is not taken, a self is being augmented. Please, Nat, be with us fully in the triumph that is healing. Remember, only content­ment is designed. The self is always still there, the self is a noble spark, bountifully persisting.”

  And that was when Sam spoke up.

  “No, no,” he said, urgently if still a bit slurry too. “That isn’t it at all.”

  LaT. swiveled her head to look at him. Really swiveled—like a robot. For a second I thought she was one. But no. There aren’t robots that high-functioning.

  “Sam,” she purred. “Wonderful. Sharing a feeling?”

  “They’re gone. You took them. This isn’t them, it’s just a memory,” said Sam. “It’s like, the side that’s faceup, floating on the surface when the person has already been drowned.”

  He was flushed and sweaty-faced and shaking his head.

  And he hadn’t said anything yet but I knew then, I had to get to him before he did.

  “You’re taking them for the quotas,” said Sam.

  I had no clue what he was talking about. But I saw LaT.’s eyes widen in shock.

  This was it.

  “He’s going to throw up,” I interrupted, my voice panicked. “He’s gagging!”