THE LAST MAN: Part Twenty-two

There is an odd hue to the light in the atrium. Dull orange sunlight tinges the artificial white lights suspended above the lush rooftop garden. That orange light throws intersecting shadows among the lattice. The air is heavy and humid, and smelled of moss, wet earth and the musk of rotting vegetation. It is much different from the smell of the Low City. There is a harmony and peacefulness to the scents here, and they settle me. I am told, by the Man from the Corporation, that the garden is one place Sentinel has little interest in.

The garden is hopelessly overgrown and neglected. It grows wild, encroaching upon meandering pathways of crushed white stone. Trees crush to the ceiling, bending and spreading outwards to combine with the others in a thick green canopy. Some grow burdened with tangled vines that hang in tattered sheets of broad green leaves.

I find the garden well beyond my meager capacity for description. I have never known such things as trees, or flowers or grass. Certainly nothing more than moss or the occasional vine shrouding city walls. I am stunned by the variety, by virile colors and leaves of all manner of shape and texture. They are all so different, and yet there is a harmony and purpose to each. Vines embrace rather than strangle. There is competition, but no antagonism, despite that they are considered lowly forms of life.

I walk casually along the path with the Man from the Corporation. He takes my arm, as if we have been dear friends forever. There is a peaceful, almost contrite expression on his face. It is the first chance I have had to truly study him. He is old and frail. Much older than anyone I have ever seen, older even than the judges. It seems he should have gone to Reclamation long ago. His jaw is sharp and angular, culminating in small whimsical lips. His hair is bone-white, making his pristine blue eyes all the more stunning. There is a hesitation to his smile, as though he is about to say something wise, or is just as surprised by the thought as anyone. He smiles broadly as I pause to breath in the scent of the garden.

“You’re not like the others; Associates or the judges.”
“What do you mean?” he asks, with a note of condescension. I’m struggling to put my finger on it exactly.

“I don’t know. Almost like a separate breed.”

He smiles and looks around at the garden. Lovely, colorful little birds dart overhead.

“A separate breed, eh?”

“You’re much older, for one.”

He is a quiet a moment, his eyes searching mine for some indication that what he is about to reveal will not betray everything. I can see that the question weighs as heavily as the answer.
“Do you have any idea why the Corporation exists at all? No, of course you don’t. This planet is used up; finished. All that is left is to leave this place and discover our fate among the Universe. It’s not reasonable to assume all mankind will be spared. So it was decided to search for the strongest genetic lines, a hand full that would perpetuate the species for eternity. All these people, the Associates, judges, Section Twenty-one, all of them are amalgamations of those strongest lines.”

“But those lines also produced me, and Desiree, and all those in the Low City.”

“Of course,” he concedes.

“I might guess that it was less of a search than an assumption that a powerful few would continue?” My accusation is softened by a smile. He does not answer right off. He must know that I already know the answer.

“You might.”

At a tree I pause to touch the course bark. “All this diversity, and I am such a threat to you.”
He doesn’t reply. Instead the Man from the Corporation touches the tree as well.

“Very different from the pictures, eh?”

“The smell,” I remark. “It fills me.”

“You are one of the last to see this place.”

“I don’t understand?” I say, perplexed.

“Did you believe that this, that any of this could last forever?”

“But this.” I brush my fingers through the long prickly needles of a small fir, awakening its peppery perfume.

“There were others who cared, but I am all that is left. When I am gone… You must realize that this is superfluous, a guilty pleasure without purpose, the archaeology of hope. Much as yourself.”

“Pardon?” I ask. There is something in his voice that is dark and funeral. He kneels beside me and runs his fingers through the gently white halos of dandelions that have gone to seed. They tumble away in the wake of his hand. He touches leaves and stems and soil as though memorizing them, and breathes their scent from his fingertips. He looks at me.

“Hope is a stained sheet. It’s an irrational relic, like melancholy or remorse, or longing over a dead history. There is no purpose to hope, but the delusion from reality.” He stands and faces me directly. “You are a stain on this society, and when your trial is over you will be discarded just as surely.”

I hear the words of old John Brown, spoken from his deathbed. You may dispose of me easily-I am nearly disposed of now, but this question is yet to be settled. I would scream those words at him and kill him with them. His words suck the air from my lungs. Blood rushes like a fever in my face.

“This was all concocted for your entertainment?”

“You received no pleasure from it?” he smiles with sincerity. “Perhaps a triumphal glow now and then? Indeed, man, there were moments of absolute brilliance! ‘Men must tolerate men by right of agreement!’ It was all I could do to keep from shouting with joy.”

“Wasted effort?”

“You had a voice, if only fleeting. That’s much more than the vast majority will ever enjoy. You have that. What more do you want?”

“I want life,” I say, sweating bullets, as though I’ve made some irrational request. He breathes deeply and sits on a small bench, sweeping away the small dead leaves so I may sit. Vines cover the rusting iron legs. A cottony white spider’s wed fills the space between the legs. I hesitate to join him. It feels like a concession to the Corporation when I final sit. I don’t look at him.

“Have you ever really tried to comprehend forever?” he says.
I don't answer right off. ‘We are caught in an extraordinary paradox,’ Mandela said once, ‘finite creatures made from the infinite.’ I only smile.

The man from the Corporation frowns. “Of course you haven’t. They don’t teach common Associates such abstract things. It is only necessary that you work, reproduce and care reasonably for yourself.”

“Forever,” I repeat to myself. He takes no notice.

“You and I will never know eternity. We’ll never know a measurable fraction of it. My life is nearly past, and yours…the Corporation will not allow you to exist. We have this moment, my friend, and all that we can make of it.”

THE LAST MAN: Part Twenty-one

I stand and stretch with a groan. After a piss I look out across the city. The hazy orange sun is glorious and warm. The ruins are lost to the sun’s bright reflection upon the mirror-like sea. The city looks clean and full. Business is brisk, the streets choked with traffic.

“What is your fertility rank?” I ask without looking at her. Desiree’s reflection is vaguely superimposed over the city. The fires burning among the ruins are clearer than I can ever recall.

“I’m viable,” she cocks her head. “Why do you ask?”

I don’t answer right off. Without a word I grab one of the chairs, walk calming across the room and smash the Sentinel by the door. Desiree screams, startled. She covers herself with the sheet and looks at me as if I have gone stark raving mad. Truth be told, I’m not so sure I haven’t.

“What are you doing?” she cries. A body can be Reclaimed for much less. I doubt we will for this, at least not before the trial ends. I have gotten away with so much already. I figure they will repair it soon enough. Kneeling at the bed I take her trembling hands in mine.

“What if you become pregnant?”

“I don’t know.”

“What if it looks like me? Would you be ashamed? Disgusted?”

She thinks a moment. “I don’t know.”

“I’d want it to have a chance.”

“You’re crazy to believe that, you know?”

“If there was some place, somewhere far from Sentinel and the Corporation?”

“No such place exists,” she scoffs.

“If there was?”

“It doesn’t!”

“Can’t you answer the question?” I shake her, growing impatient.

“It’s a ridiculous.”

“Just yes or no?”

“To what?”

I groan loudly and flail with frustration. She really is just impossible. I turn and have a mind to fling the chair across the room. Then she smiles, though it is tinged with spite. She toys with me, which only enrages me more.

“What?” I demand.

“Your temper,” she replies.

“You provoke it,” I laugh. It is impossible to remain mad at her for very long. “I hate you.”

Desiree’s expression softens. Her eyes flash quickly to the shattered Sentinel. Wisps of white smoke trail from the tattered innards.

“Where would we go?”
I pull her quickly from bed and guide her to the window. I lean against her and press a finger to the window. She studies the distant ruins for a time, and her brow furls slightly. She has not noticed them before.

“There?” she asks, perplexed.

“There.”

“The ruins?”

“Things are different there!” My voice rises with emotion.

“Like how?”

“Free,” I say.

“And how do you know that?” she asks, trapping me. I draw away and right the upturned chair. With a wounded sigh I sit.

“Anyway, that’s what I believe.”

“Don’t be a fool!” she laughs. The words crush me. I would die to be anything but a fool in her eyes. I fall into bed, staring at the wall. My chest tightens as tears come to my eyes. It seems an eternity before she comes to me. I refuse to look at her, but she knows only too well the feeble nature of that gesture.

“Don’t be mad,” she says.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“So what if I am?”

She moves onto the bed beside me, nudging me with her hips, and running her hand gently across my back and shoulder. I pull away. Not much, but I so want to punish her for being so cruel. She is first to bridge the chasm, and kisses my shoulder.

“You’re not a fool.”

I turn and melt in her eyes. My fingers brush her soft breast and the rubbery dark nipple. With a shudder Desiree pulls me to her chest.

“They had dreams,” I say, staring past her. There are still tears in my eyes, but not for her comments, but now from a sudden upwelling of passion. It is something pure and clean and not of this world; something that transcends the body. “Things were not always as they are now.”

She does not reply. Instead she nods un-committed and strokes my chest. After all, what was there to say? How does one talk about the past to people who have no history? It is why Section Twenty-one and the Corporation have no fear of me. I am trapped within a truth. I could shout them to the masses in hopes of starting a revolt, but they would prove little more than the ramblings of a madman.

“I wish I could believe like you,” she says to be kind.

“Do you?”

She rises and walks to the window again. I marvel at her waist, the alternating tension and relaxation of the muscles of her back and shoulders, and of the rise and fall of her buttocks when she moves. Desiree remains silhouetted at the window for some time. I can see her face reflected there, and know that it is only a half-hearted gesture.

“I see it,” she says, “the fires. People are moving, though I cannot make out any details. Are they men or women? Maybe there are more like you.”

She turns. I sit, unsure for moment if she is still mocking me. Then I can see that she doesn’t really believe, but that she believes in me.

“I don’t know,” I tell her, “but in when the light is just right I believe that I can actually see them. Sometimes I close my eyes and can almost feel their hands touching me, welcoming me.”

“Hands?”

“Maybe I’ll go there. Maybe I’ll escape and bring you with me.”

She returns to me, and falls into my arms. I kiss her smooth belly and look up between her breasts. I have no idea if she believes anything I have said. I have no evidence, no concrete reason for believing as I do. It is hope and I am bleeding it all over her.

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.”

THE LAST MAN: Part Nineteen

“Show us a single benefit to your existence,” says the Man from Efficiency.

Even the man from the Corporation realizes the impossible nature of that question, even though it is at the heart of all this. Sweat beads across my bow. I brush it away with my fingers, watching where the drops fall.

“Be fair!” the Corporation Man scolds. His hand pounds the desk loudly causing the judges to cringe and exchange nervous glances. He appears frustrated. “I have not sought to intervene, but the question is unfair, and, I dare say, unanswerable.”

The Woman from Reproduction presses the issue. “In the view of the court the question is fundamen…”

It’s a fool’s question!” he snaps in quick reply.

“Not sure I follow,” says the Man from Efficiency.

“I could ask each of you the same question,” The man from the Corporation’s tone is belittling.

“Are you an observer or a participant?” Asks the Man from Police. His words are poorly chosen and harshly delivered. I can see that he already regrets uttering them, though it is far too late to call them back. His eyes narrow as he cowers from the blistering response from the Corporation Man.

“Perhaps we might do with one less judge!”

“No, no,” I reply, with a casual wave of the hand. I nod to him respectfully. It is genuine, even if it becomes another opportunity for dividing the judges further. “I will answer the question, if the Court will permit?”

“I can hardly wait,” scoffs the man from Efficiency, drawing a stern glance from the Corporation Man.

“The court will not interfere,” he says.

I would reach out to the Man from the Corporation. I want to exploit the friction among the judges as much as possible, but not if it means condescending, groveling, or appearing to curry favor.

“If I may,” I scoot onto the table. It is thoroughly theatrical. The Man from the Corporation seems to be the only one to recognize the gesture. “The question is definitely an impossible one. It is, for one, impossible in that no man can adequately proclaim his right to exist to another. Do I have a right to exist in this society? The question is fully one of perspective, and perspectives are, by their very nature, biased and limited. It is those biases and limits that become the essence of my defense.”

“Go on,” says the Man from the Corporation, covering a smile with his hand.

I am not speaking to the judges now. Their views are well known and unchangeable. The character of their arguments is combative. They are skewed and devoid of compassion, or any pretense that they desire for any understanding beyond their own.

“There is but one difference between us,” I say. “This flesh is nothing, except that the history of man is the inability to refuse to look beyond the flesh, and failing that nationality and the soul. Mankind is a history written of a precious few souls struggling against that foolishness, but it is written in the blood of all those sacrificed to nothing that enabled mankind to reach its fullest potential. Instead we separated ourselves, subdividing the world down to smaller and smaller parcels that our wounded and frightened hearts may digest until all that is left is individual, alone and separated from all others. And now, at the end of all that I stand here before this court, before the Corporation, but also at the edge of history yet to be written. The question is, will the history yet to unfold be written in blood as it was in the past? The answer to that question is fundamental,” I glance with disdain at the Woman from Reproduction, “is fundamental to realizing the lessons mankind has learned from history. But the question that pertains to me, to the vast difference between you and I, between all of you and I, and between my ancestors and all who sought by purpose, silence or ignorance to oppress them boils down to this…I must justify my existence.”


I move from the table coming as close to the Judges as I can. The emotion ran away with me. The world roared from my soul, from something eternal and primeval, fully a character, and assertion of every cell in my body rather than some vague notion.

“Men must tolerate men by right of agreement. You must know that my rights are inviolable, and that no man may ‘give’ another man rights, for if you can give those rights then you may take them away. No one gives me rights. They are mine, and if taken away then they are stolen and that is the difference. Hence the words of Malcolm X; Kill that dog! I have done nothing. This right to exist is mine by virtue that I am, and if you remove that from me then you have committed the real crime!”

THE LAST MAN: Part Eighteen

“Kill that dog!” I slam my hand hard to the table. It smarts terribly, and I almost wince. The judges jump in their seats. Even the man from the Corporation jumps. The pain travels white hot up my arm into my shoulder, but that pain is well worth the reaction. The man from the Corporation covers a smile with his hand. He seems impressed. I am as well, at having caught them all by complete surprise. Sentinel must be furious!

“I beg your pardon?” The Man from Police gasps.

“If a man uses a dog to keep you from what is yours, kill that dog!” I assert the words of Malcolm X.

“I don’t understand,” says the Woman from Security.

“Violence!” accuses the Man from Efficiency. “The very reason humanity did away with race and religion. The inherent violence of human difference. And there you are, at the end of your argument. All that is left is violence.”

The Woman from Reproduction concurs.

“Violence is the last domain of the downtrodden,” I assert.

“Certainly was an attention getter,” remarks the Man from the Corporation.

“A subversion,” I say.

“A small victory,” he smiles respectfully, though with some sympathy.

“But a victory.”

“Indeed.”

“But to what end?” asks the Man from Entertainment. It is impossible to refrain from a smart-ass comment.

“I thought you of all people would recognize the value of theater!”

“It’s the concept of violence, which you seem all to ready to employ, that I wish to explore,” the an from Police rubs his forehead and looks over notes.

“I don’t think he was really advocating…” the Man from the Corporation begins. I abruptly cut him off.

“Indeed I was!”

“Sorry?”

“There you have it,” concedes the Woman from Security.

“Power concedes nothing without demand,’ said Frederick Douglas. There is an implicit power behind any demand, or it has no value. The only true power of the powerless is violence.”

“Or the potential for violence.”

“The same,” I say.

“So you admit to that predilection?” says the Man from Police, as though uncovering some hidden motive in my words.

“It must be a possibility when power is unbalanced,” I say. A warmth rushes through me, as though I am being cornered. It is much too late to retreat, and especially before this bunch. “”You must understand, that when your power overcomes reason and mercy, that I may rise against you, and that our very existence becomes part of the negotiation.”

“I’ll caution you about threatening the court,” the Woman from Reproduction scolds.

“I have threatened no one,” I say, “Instead I have merely pointed out that your power resides in the size and force of the state, and that I am at the mercy to your penchant for fairness. My power, all that I have in the face of the Corporation remains, if pressed, defiance.”

“May I ask,” the Woman from Security begins. Her tone is softer, almost sympathetic. She even leans as far forward as possible. “May I ask, to what purpose? Why defy and resist? Why disrupt the precise order of the society?”

Is her question a trick? She must know what I have seen. All of them surely know that I have been to the Low City, that I have seen the nightmarish scenes in the Reclamation Center, that I know the hypocrisy of the Corporation and the refuse it pretends is solid foundation. Do I argue for my existence against all that, or does calling forth their shame and infallibility only make it easier for them to get rid of me?

THE LAST MAN: Part Seventeen

“I remember the exact moment,” she begins again. Her name is Desiree, a name which somehow seems appropriate. We are sitting at the table, both completely drained by our laughter. A steady rain drives churning black smoke from the Reclamation Center down into the city where it lingers like a dirty fog. Heavy gray clods descend along the coast in tattered sheets. Oily black soot bleeding upon the window distorts that world into monotone abstracts. She pauses, weighing those first words, her eyes flitting anxiously to Sentinel.

“I was a Mandate Clerk for Reclamation Services. It is hardly more than a computer lottery, really. Not much to there, but my department’s task was to notify section twenty-one for the occasional non-compliance, coordinate with the Channels for labor replacement, and to reassign living assignments…”

As Desiree continues my thoughts are flooded by the terrible images from the Reclamation Center.

…it was all terribly precise and efficient. I thought nothing as Associates in my work section received their Mandates. They would simply finish out their day and that was it. One day my Mandate would come. I never, never questioned,” she looks at me deeply pained. “Like questioning the motion of the earth around the moon, or the sum of four plus four.” She shrugs, fiddling with her fingers. “Then one morning getting out of bed my legs became tangled in the sheet and I tripped. My head struck the corner of the table, right here.”

She parts the hair covering her forehead. Perhaps two inches above the left eye a poorly healed scab covers a ragged gash.

Sentinel surely alerted Section Twenty-one?” I say.

“Hmm, I laid in a pool of my own blood for two days. Seems sentinel only really worries over subversive or dangerous thoughts. The languishing emptiness of the unconscious Associate is of much less concern.”

“But your position at Reclamation Services?”

She glares at Sentinel a moment, as if tempting it with her obvious disdain. “A secret of the Corporation, birthrates are hardly uniform. From time to time Reclamation creates overages and shortages in the system. Actual reclamation progresses at a constant unchangeable rate. It functions at maximum capacity. That rate never rises and never falls. I believe that the reclamation center is the most efficient link in the system.”

Desiree obviously has no idea. “I have seen it firsthand.”

“The Reclamation Center?” she asks, surprised. “You have been there?”

“Nothing you should concern yourself with,” I say with a knowing glance to Sentinel.

She stands and goes to the window, looking out across the dull and rain-swept city. “When I awoke everything had changed. Everything was so terribly confusing. I tried to control these feelings, but they were just too much. Worst of all, I had the sudden sense of being entirely alone in the world. I broke down at work one day. Within forty-eight hours I received my Mandate. Two days later I was reassigned and brought here.”

I recall the words of Frederick Douglas. In them I find common cause with my new roommate, as well as ample ammunition for court on Monday, “…we were one; and as much so by our tempers and dispositions, as by the mutual hardships to which we were necessarily subjected by our condition as slaves.”

THE LAST MAN: Part Sixteen

At the window of my flat stands a woman, facing the city. She is dressed in an Associate’s tunic and trousers. She is weeping. Her head is bowed, almost disappearing in the canyon of her shoulders. A low moan escapes her. Beyond that there is nothing to distinguish her from any other female Associate. She is the same size, the same color as all the others. Her hair is the same dull blackish-brown hue. Her hips are shapely and perfect for child bearing. It is only her uncontrolled emotions that seem to have doomed her to my doorstep

I have a sense that she was sent by the Corporation. In such a state, surely this sort of breakdown would earn her immediate reclamation. I doubt that any of this is her doing, but certainly she is a purposefully proposed distraction intended to disrupt or destroy my preparations for the resumption of my trial Monday morning. Not that I can rightly hold any of that against her. As cruel as it seems, the best course of action is simply to let her be and let the Corporation do what it will do.

I step into the room, moving along the wall to the bed. Upon a hanger in the small closet across the room a coat, jacket and several Associate uniforms are hung beside mine, as if she has been here forever. Another chair has been added at the table. Her bowl and cup are set neatly opposite mine.

She struggles to collect herself. With that she straightens and turns, not quite facing me. She studies me a moment. Her face is explosive, as if it might dissolve completely into tears, and that the redness of her face belies the incredible effort in holding them back. It is clear my aloof manner makes her uncomfortable. The moment hangs heavy and terrible between us. I believe she wrongly interprets my disinterest as hostility.

“Wasn’t my choice,” she says, breaths tumbling in her chest. I make no reply and remove my tunic. Sitting at the edge of the bed my gaze is empty and distant. “Section Twenty-one…My reclamation Mandate was revoked.”

I smile, but it is one filled with pity and knowing. Suddenly the word, once benign and unquestioned becomes obscene, less for the actual reality than for this poor creature’s sublime ignorance. My eyes meet hers for just an instant, but then I look away.

“AHH!” she screams with rage and claws at her face. Suddenly she is charging across the room. I raise an arm to protect myself, but she rushes past me and beats wildly the Sentinel on the wall. “You can see in my head, then why can’t you fix me? Make me as numb and empty as the rest! Why? Why do you leave me this way?”

Fearing the tantrum will bring Section Twenty-one I drag her back across the room, and push her into the corner by the window. Her mood has very definitely changed, enough that I retreat a few steps just to be safe.

“Are you mad?” I ask, looking back at Sentinel.

“Mad? I am definitely mad!” she froths.

I settle to the floor across from her, my back against the wall. My legs are drawn up. I clasp my hands around them. She anxiously pulls her fingers through her long dark hair, then rubs her auburn eyes. The storm of our introduction settles. And as with all storms is replaced with a deep and resonating quiet.

I expect she will ask me the obvious question. Since leaving the Channels I have existed largely alone, without any task or position, certainly without sex, and with little substantial human contact. Indeed, my time in the Low City proves the richest relations I have had with any other human being.

I have no clue how I will answer, or even if I should. Not that there is any harm in it, and I certainly have nothing to hide from her. Rather, any explanation comes with the history of my life, of a history far beyond my life, and I simply do not have the energy or inclination. But she surprises me in not asking.

The ultimate struggle of the Corporation wrestles in her eyes. It is the fundamental question of logic versus emotion. The essence of that at question lies at the core of all societies, and, in no small way, upon the stark battlefield of the individual human heart. One is a herd of wild beasts, while logic is a whore, abandoned of all of all empathy and morality (except that which it benefits from), and is completely for sale. She was mulling over words and calculating. Surely she is as distrustful of me as I am of her. But there is loneliness there as well, not something familiar to normal Associates. As the orphan of emotions loneliness is perhaps the strongest force shaping that embattled heart.

“Do you have any idea?” she cocks her head to one side. It is not a question a normal Associate would have the first clue in answering, or asking either.

I smile knowingly and scratch my calf through the trousers. “More than you realize.”

She nods thoughtfully and purses her soft pink lips. She seems in no particular hurry to reply. “Perhaps that is why they put us together.”

“I doubt it.”

The moment of quiet flees her as quickly as it came. She seems a slave to her emotions, struggling with something unknown to her before and now sudden and powerful. Unlike the mechanical logic promoted and projected by the Corporation, her raw and tentative emotions betray a much wider Universe and her much diminished place in that Universe. I recognize it readily, for I still struggle with mine.

“These emotions are tearing me to pieces,” she begins. “One minute I sink into despair so deep and dark I fear being completely consumed. The next I am so burdened with joy at existing even for a moment, for this breath inside of me and for the privilege of beholding the stars above that I am sure to erupt and fill space with my light. But it is all too much and I long for the emptiness of the life before…” She searches my tentative gaze. “Are you like all the others? Do you really have any idea what I am saying?”

I remain silent. I feel that I should touch her, but cannot muster the courage. Still, this is the truest bond between people, I am discovering. It is not society or politics, and certainly not the random lottery of flesh and race. No, the truest bond is in the shared suffering in facing an unknown Universe. It is this fleeting uncertainty which we call life. It is that one fewer question in an infinite number of questions that is at last answered.

“I know.”

The words stop her cold. They arrest her stampeding emotions in place. Her brow furls. For the first time I recognize her smooth round face as gentle and attractive. She begins to laugh. It grows and becomes louder, taking her over fully until she is howling and holding her side. It infects me until that tiny flat reverberates with our unrestrained release. Sentinel must think us utterly mad.