THE LAST MAN: Part Twenty

I’d be lying if I said there was any real passion in the act. It was animal sex pure and simple. It was an exchange, a bodily pressure, and in a way, an act of rage. It was sex, a release, a few moments in which the intersection of my body with Desiree’s eclipsed the whole world. But to dismiss it as merely a bodily function, as blind as, say, a sneeze, would not be accurate either. It is not about the biological release, but rather the magic of a touch, and in the unencumbered closeness of bodies that leaves no room for dishonesty.

We lay together afterwards, wrapped in each other’s arms and legs. Her breathing is still heavy, like mine. She turns and pulls me close, nuzzling her face into my neck. I exalt at the simple rise and fall of her belly against mine. She is flushed, and the soft scent of her tossed hair steals my thoughts from the trial. In the fading sunset of her pleasure Desiree’s body trembles slightly. When it subsides she lets out a long breath warm against my flesh that cools me. I rise a little and looked into her glistening face. The hair is matted to her damp forehead.

On the whole, I am happy with my new companion. She must feel the same. Certainly our attraction is more than mechanical. We are hopeful islands to one another. I am careful not to assign too much to any of this, however. Those long abandoned concepts of Love are ill-defined abstracts. It is a word without meaning and certainly without relevance any longer. Long about the end of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries Love was dissected, its constituent parts isolated and quantified in terms of bio-chemical equations. No fault of Science, with its natural and laudable quest for knowledge, but rather the fault of misplaced cynicism that twisted that knowledge and stole the magical nature of Love. For truly the magic of love lies in the finite nature of our existence amid the miniscule perspective we bring to the universe.

Overnight love was transformed into a drug, a fleeting and childish titillation, a mystery only of fate and the random lottery of advantageous meetings. And so Science marginalized it, business mocked it as a commodity, and religion propagandized it until Love ceased to hold purpose when at last the Corporation (with the complicent silence of the people) negated it altogether. The strategies by moralists, false prophets and religionists that seized upon ever narrowing definitions instead proved the ultimate catalyst of Love’s demise.

Rolling to one side, she presses her smooth buttocks against my side. I’m glad she cannot see my smile; dumb like a schoolboy. It is a relic of a wiser time, before our dreams were stolen by the Corporation, or before the reality of the world in which such fancies could run free and unfettered. My breaths echo off the ceiling. I could almost sleep at that sweet rhythm. My eyelids grow heavy and I almost feel myself slipping away when she begins to whimper. It is almost too quiet to hear. For a moment I try to ignore her, but it grows as a weight in my heart.

“You’re crying?”

“I’m happy,” she sniffles.

“Happy?” I say. “Hardly sounds happy.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Dare I ask?” I say.

“It’s hopeless.”

“Hopeless?”

“Us. You and me.”

“And that makes you happy?”
“They’ll send us off to Reclamation soon enough. It’s guaranteed. When your trial is finished, or you’ve impregnated me, when they’ve completed their observations and experiments. Oh yes, we’ll be finished all right!”

“Well,” I groan, and pat her naked hip, “you’ve certainly cheered me up!”

“You don’t understand,” she says, retreating to the end of the bed. Desiree curls her legs close to her body. She rocks gently to and fro. “Maybe it’s my affliction, all these unnatural emotions, quite different than the corporation expects from us, but for the first time I don’t have to hide my emotions; these thoughts.” She smiles wistfully. “Death has freed me.”