I woke up in my cell bed, uncovered, every muscle in my body tight, twitchy, and generally… wrong. A chorus of aches accompanied my attempts to sit up, the echoes of the trauma resonating in my nerves. I opened my mouth and my jaw gave a loud pop. The muscles in my cheeks made their grievances clear, as well as those in my neck, my back, all the way down to my toes.
Slowly, I brought my arm into view, inspecting the still stinging electric burn just below my elbow. It’s going to take some time to heal, I thought, before remembering that it probably never will. And yet I was filled with a feeling of accomplishment, a feeling of something having been done. All it had taken was one action, one movement on my own, and the blood was pumping freely in my veins again.
I was still sitting in a prison cell, of course, awaiting a death sentence, and I felt like shit. But, despite everything, I was alive.
Something of the numb fog dissipated, and I could think. Not just about this room and the next meal, but about my life, my long story. The first years on Ceres, the hard work, meeting Ayelet for the first time and choosing to bring a child with her into this cold, dry world. Pouring every bit of my life into that child, only for him to nullify that decision. To decide against it. The way we had numbly picked up the sharp pieces, Ayelet pursuing her career further and me going deeper into a community that was turning from journalistic to shamelessly revolutionary in nature. It was meant to be a redmption, but that, too, became a sort of hopeless, repetitive hell. Worse yet, it gave me an excuse not to admit to myself that I was too much of a coward to end it. I’d waited in that hole until Arik’s request came, like a rope slinging down from the lit surface to climb out with, not thinking too much where that climb would lead.
It seemed so little, as I was sitting in my cell and looking through the narrow lens of my memories. A flaccid ending to a flaccid life. And still I was happy, a real point of light in this darkness, that I was about to die for having tried. That I had taken a risk once, that I took my chance to make a change bigger than myself. That I became enough of a danger to be killed.
And as I thought that word, it was as if I realized for the first time that it was ending, that there was going to be no more, and the horror of it struck me. How my body will soon be lying dry and frozen on the surface.
More than anything, I wished not to be alone, but there I was, in a cell, with no one to keep me company but the man on the other side of the corridor, sitting on the toilet and farting long, whiny farts. A shitty lament. Perhaps things had been easier when I still had Gil and his psychological torture as a distraction. He was probably already in Last Day Town, foraging or building or, God forbid, taking confessions. I wondered if he was doing ok.
“Good Noon, Yossef Ben Ze’ev. You are to be provided with three meals per day.…” Peeps began.
Noon. The last message I’d heard was in the morning, and I didn’t feel like I’d slept for more than a day straight. Good. I’d worried that I would spend a long time knocked out, wasting what little waking time I had left. A refreshing thought.
“If you do not enter your square, coercion measures will be used in one hundred seconds… ninety-nine seconds… ninety-eight seconds…”
I placed myself in the square, and went back to the dining chamber.
#
I was at the head of the line now, waiting alone in the dining chamber. Why was I waiting here? What was the point of this design? Wouldn’t it make more sense to serve the porridge before everyone was here?
The woman from yesterday arrived, going around the corner, her square of light leading her into the room. “Good noon,” she said, and casually raised a palm.
I turned, fully facing her. All of that time to plan, and I just said the first thing that came to mind. “Why did you do that? You would have been hurt.”
“Do what?”
“Try to push that guy. You would have gotten shocked.”
“I wouldn’t mind that so much.”
“You just saw me convulsing on the floor today. Do you think it wouldn’t hurt? Are you insane?”
“Probably.” She shrugged, her good mood unaffected. The third person entered the room then, humming as she did, and my square finally moved forward. I placed my bowl under the dispenser and turned to look at the newcomer.
She had deep creases around her eyes and mouth, and a bend to her back that could only have come from decades of sitting at a desk. She was so thin I was surprised that she could even move in time with her designated square. She smiled at me and the young woman, bitterly, mocking all of us.
The young woman waved to her. “Peace,” she said.
“Oh, peace,” the old woman murmured, her rasp a mock-cheer, making it clear she didn’t want anyone talking to her.
I put my bowl under the dispenser. “It wouldn’t have looked good in the trial,” I said, catching her attention. “If Peeps let them know that you got into a fight with another prisoner.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And it wouldn’t affect yours?”
“I’m already fucked as it is.”
“That’s two of us, but then why’d you let that guy spit in your food? That seems more insane to me.”
The old woman chuckled, her eyes on the floor. Whether she was listening or not was anyone’s guess.
There was no time to think up an excuse. “Because I’m a fucking coward.”
She frowned quickly. “Didn’t seem like a coward to me.”
“Listen, friend - ”
“Keren.”
“Listen, Keren, this came out wrong. I owe you. For what you did before.” I took my porridge-filled bowl from the dispenser, and we all took a step forward when ordered.
She put her own bowl under the dispenser, and turned her palms upward. “I didn’t do anything.”
How do I explain that new burst of life that I’d felt? That I wouldn’t have done anything if she weren’t there? “You did. I wish there was something I could do to pay you back.”
“We’re even, as far as I’m concerned. But...” she mused, wasting a precious second. “You told that guy you know what happens after the trial. Do you?”
“I do.”
“Tell me. I’m dying to know,” she smirked, and I couldn’t help but smile.
Funny, how I’ve been struggling to get it out, and here was someone wanting to hear without any coercion. “It won’t make any sense.”
“Few things do.” Keren took her bowl away, we stepped forward, and Peeps instructed the old woman to take a new bowl and place it under the dispenser. She obeyed silently.
“They’re throwing people outside, at the Everdark craters,” I said. “With suits, and twenty four hours of oxygen in them.”
“That’s all you saw?”
“That’s the most important part. If you get out of here, that’s the message you have to spread.”
She cocked her head, as if trying to understand what my problem was.“What’s your name?”
“Yossi.”
“You’re terrified, aren’t you, Yossi?” She said, and for the rest of my life I could try to figure out how she could say something so personal without making me want to turn away.
“Wouldn’t anyone be, in my place?”
She closed her eyes and shook her head; the tiniest motion. “Even before that. Always scared. We need to take care of that.”
“How long do you think we got to be here?” I gestured at the cafeteria, not saying the word together.
“About a quarter minute, I’m guessing.”
The old woman picked up her bowl, humming as she did and the squares of light began moving again.
“No, I meant like, total.” Until they throw one of us out. “It isn’t enough. How the hell are you going to take care of anything? It doesn’t matter. There’s no time to analyze. But you can tell me who you are. Why did you risk yourself to help me? What are you here for, that you’re certain they’ll throw you out?” I asked, but the light squares had already begun moving. Our time for that meal was over – I had devoured it with my rambling, asking so many questions there was no time left to answer.
She took a moment to weigh the words. “Really?” she said as we were in the hallway, our paths separating. “That’s what you want to hear about?”
And before I found an answer, she was gone.
The walk back to my cell felt longer than ever before. I fought the urge to look back at her as our ways parted. Back in my cell, I sat down, and placed the bowl of porridge beside me. I wanted to count the time until I saw her again, but there was no time to count. Without a clock to chop down time into manageable portions, I was left with a fluid, continuous stream of moments each one identical to the other. I was going crazy. I studied the cell, every detail of it, trying not to think about anything but that one minute, that one portion of human interaction that I was going to have. How little time I will have to understand who that strange person is. How long, in contrast, I will spend in that cell, alone, most of the rest of life, in fact, instead of being with another person, listening to their voice, watching their smile. Just when I thought I couldn’t get any more pathetic.
I tried the porridge. It tasted the same as it had before, but also, somehow, absolutely amazing.
#
She started talking as soon as she stepped into the dining chamber, not wasting a second. “My past, of all things, is what you want to hear about? Sounds boring to me, but I’ll make you a deal—you tell me what’s outside, and I’ll tell you how I got here,” she said. “And if you listen closely, you might realize how to stop being afraid.”
“Stop being afraid of what?”
“Death, the future, anything.” She smiled, and I spent just a second longer than was necessary looking at the smile in those green eyes.
Something in me softened. Not that I expected talking to her to actually cure me of anything, but I found myself looking forward to playing along with her—to being part of a game; any game. I smiled back.
The old woman entered the room last, her bowl in hand, and was already rolling her eyes.
I placed my bowl under the dispenser. “How can you teach someone not to fear death?”
Keren smirked. “I thought you didn’t care about that—that you just wanted to know how I got here.”
“Well now I wanna know both.”
“And I want to know what goes on the outside.”
“And I want to know what silence sounds like,” the old woman murmured to herself. We ignored her.
“There’s no time to argue,” I said.
“Then stop arguing. We don’t know how many days we have, so we’ll make a deal. One day you’ll answer my questions, and one day I’ll answer yours.”
“That means about three minutes of talking per day.” And if I’m lucky enough to spend six more days here, that’s… “Less than eighteen total.”
“You’re porridge.”
“Excuse me?”
She pointed at the full bowl waiting patiently under the dispenser; I had missed the speakers encouraging me to take it. I took it, moved ahead, and brought a spoonful to my mouth, indulging a hunger that now returned in full. She put her own bowl under the dispenser.
“That’s why it’s doubly important that you don’t lie to me.”
“What?” I swallowed hurriedly. “What would I even lie to you about?”
“You look like a good liar; I’m just saying. These little talks could save your life, if you’re for real. No bullshit, no lies. Whole truth and nothing but, with all of the shame and discomfort that it brings. Do we have a deal?”
I wished that I was a better person, one that could see that reaching out to be as wholesome as it was. Unfortunately, I was a disgusting old man, and my brain responded the only way it knew how when a younger woman expressed interest in me. Images flashed in front my eyes, so real the experience was almost dissociative. Her eyes focused in deep concentration, her breath ragged, sweat pooling in the hollow of her throat as I held her back with both of my hands and thrust in manic, desperate intensity against the metal railing of somewhere with no G, the center of some great turning room, her hair floating around her as if she were a siren.
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“You know,” she mused as I didn’t answer, looking at the ceiling of rough rock. “My grandfather was one of the people digging the first tunnels of Ceres. This is his legacy. I wonder if someone else would have felt pride, at that.” She turned back to me. “Anyway, deal?”
I blinked hard. “Deal,” I said, somewhat unsure as to what I was agreeing to.
She nodded decisively as the light squares started moving. “Afraid we better not shake on it,” she said, quirking her lip, and our time for that day was over.
#
Sleep wouldn’t come to me. It might have been the terror that had to be somewhere in there, or the excitement, or the resurfacing rage at a system that treated human beings like this. So I spent the night perfecting a fantasy, almost forgetting my surroundings, sinking into it with focus and intent that would have been impossible if I were not in this isolation. I forced myself to see, to smell, to feel as if her skin was actually on mine.
I savor the feeling of her weight—no: of her mass as we wrestle in zero G, her legs wrapped around me, keeping me close. The taste of her thin lips, their texture. The pressure of her lean body, of her small breasts against my skin. My hand pressing the small of her back, making sure she’ll never leave.
I imagine what it would have been like not just to be alive, but to live.
#
“Good morning, Yossef Ben Ze’ev. You are to be provided with three meals per day…”
From what I understood from Gil and the older man, Ariel, it would be in the morning that Peeps notified me of the trial. I listened closely to see if today was the day. But it ended on the usual note – “Coercion measures will be used in one hundred seconds…”
I got up, stepped into my square, walked, and waited at the head of the line, bowl in one hand and spoon in the other. Not just stood still, but actually waited for something.
She came around the corner and waved, smiling, as soon as she saw me. A small, relaxed movement, a gesture so out of place it stunned me. “So,” she started with no introduction. “How’d you find out what’s going on outside?”
Funny, the words that come out of your mouth when you have no time to think. “I was looking for something worth risking my life for, something worth becoming a real journalist for, and this tip came with a burning fuse. I did, but never got a chance to write it down.”
“What would I have read, if you did?” She asked, amused but genuinely curious.
I did my best to oblige, telling her about the airlock, the functioning suits given to those thrown out, the horror in Anaxagoras’s voice is he realized he isn’t going to Earth.
She tilted her head in curiosity. “Why not just no throw them out naked?”
“I don’t know.”
The old woman laughed, her yellowing teeth visible, clacking like a haunted skull.
#
Another third of a day passed staring at a ceiling. In a way, this was even worse than when Gil was around.
#
“Maybe they’re afraid.”
“Who?”
“The people who deicided to throw people out with suits on.’
“What are they afraid of?”
“Guilt.” She gave me a long look, and seeing that I didn’t quite follow her intention, continued to her next question. “Never mind that. What do people do there all day? Is it like a support group?”
I told her about the lines, how the residents insisted to be called by their line’s name. I didn’t have time to tell her how they schemed against each other, just that they did.
Her surprise was mixed with visible appreciation. “Really? In such a short time, they get into a tribal mindset?”
“It was like a persona. They didn’t just learn what they should do, in that short time, but also… how to behave. Who they should be.”
She looked off into the distance, amused. “What strange games people play.”
#
I fell asleep, even with the light on, and when I woke from my unplanned nap by the sound of the deaf man having a coughing fit in the other cell, I was disoriented and confused. I had the distinct feeling that it was all a pretense; this prison, my life, Keren and my infatuation with her, death and the fear of it, all thin pretenses that I tried so hard to keep in the waking world that I had forgotten it was a pretense at all. I washed my face in the sink and after a while, it passed.
#
“What was it like to talk with people in that situation?” Keren proceeded, as if nothing had happened in between, as if there was no break, as if she had not waited for hours upon hours in a cell, struggling with torturous isolation. I wanted to say something about how strange that was, but that was not our deal. The only thing she asked of me was to tell her about Last Day Town, so I was going to do just that, to the best of my ability. But that was the thing, I supposed. Regardless of my aspirations, regardless of my practice, putting thoughts into words was just never my strong suit. It was easier to admit it then, when it was becoming increasingly clear I’d won’t get another chance at the game. “I thought it was just madness, at first, and then that it was a pretense. They kept talking about tomorrow, about yesterday, as if this had anything to do with them. Isn’t that absolutely insane?”
“It doesn’t sound insane to me. At least, not more than most people.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll explain when it’s my turn, but now it’s yours.” I took my bowl away, and she put hers in place. “What did they talk about, when they mentioned tomorrow and yesterday?”
“They were… grateful. Or vengeful.” And I envied them for that. Even when I had a tomorrow, I didn’t feel either of those things. “Paying back to people who had only now been given their names for action comitted by people who were already dead.”
“And you think it really mattered to them, or they were pretending?”
You’d think that she’d ask first about the kind of things they do, or how they died, but she went straight for the heart of it. “I don’t know. What’s worse? I mean, even if they were pretending, that was the only reason they could do anything other than going mad with grief – And I think, if anything they told me is to be believed, that they actually cared for each other.”
“They had somebody to play along for, to give that measure of comfort.” She looked away, her lips pursed as if she was suddenly taken with the urge to cry.
“I think so. I’m sorry, is this upsetting you?”
She picked up her now full bowl. “It is, but I want to know. Isn’t it heartbreaking that we would do that for each other?”
We? I hadn’t joined any lines, yet, and wasn’t sure I'd be able to.
The light squares started moving again. “Tomorrow’s your turn,” I said as our paths diverged. “I honestly can’t wait.”
For a moment I regretted it, thinking it sounded too eager, but she just smiled. No bullshit.
#
I spent the night crafting another fantasy, a synthetic dream.
I’m awkward as hell, when we meet on the outside, after our acquittals. Not knowing what to say or do, I reach out a hand for her to shake, and she ignores it, slamming into me with a hug, engulfing me, and I find myself drowning in the smell of her hair. My arms wrap around her, and she holds onto me like an astronaut without a tether holding on to a passing ship. It hurts when she lets go. We decide to go on a walk, nowhere in particular, and immediately start arguing about something meaningless. My heart pounding, I reach out and hold her hand.
I wake up to the sound of a machine attempting speech. “Good morning, Yossef Ben Ze’ev…”
#
“So, how’d you get here?” I asked as soon as I saw her.
“My mother decided to send me here, when it became undeniable Mars is going to stumble into its first world war. I thought it was an overreaction, that no one would start something so futile as a war while we were barely holding on. I didn’t want to leave her, but I wasn’t going to talk back. Never argue with an old Jew when she tells you to pack your bags,” she chuckled. “Not that there was room for bags, anyway. Have you seen what the ships from Mars are like? They cram you in a little pod and drug you into a coma so you’d waste just a little less oxygen. But I have a heart condition, and if they sedated me I might have not woken up on arrival. So my mother bribed the crew to cram me in a pod without sedation—I never asked how she got the money for that—and I went on a crash diet, so my oxygen intake wouldn’t draw attention, and I stayed in my pod for the entire forty-day trip, all the time with a pipe going up my nose and down my throat. I regretted it so much, wondering if mom even understood what she put me through. I was sure I was going to go insane.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, sounding clumsy in my own ear, and she waved a hand like it really didn’t matter. “How didn’t you? Go insane, that is.”
She gave me a confused look, her hair transmiting the wave of motion as she shook her head all the way down. “I did. Of course I did.”
I looked at her, contrasting what she was saying with the way she spoke, the way she acted. “Is this what insanity looks like?”
“You learn to hide it.”
“What are you actually hiding?” I dared ask. The old woman gave us a look, grinning to herself as we danced our little dance, but only hummed quietly.
“You see, I spent every day trying to calculate how much time was left, how much longer I have to take the feeling of the feeding tube going down my nose and the other tubes up the other side, how much time until the next feeding time, the pumping sounds and the pressure in my stomach being the only distraction. I kept calculating, counting seconds, comparing. Then something happened: I realized that it makes no difference whether I had one more day or thirty-nine. It just doesn’t matter. While I’m in there, I’m in there, and that’s all I know and all I need to know. The Keren that is out of the box may as well be someone else.”
We were led out of the chamber, and is if to play us off, the old woman let her voice ring, surprisingly deep and melodious in the fullness of its rough grace. She sang –
Mars, oh Mars,
Why didn’t we go to Mars?
Mining toxic water,
Killing my own brother,
It’s cold, but not as cold as space,
It’s cold, but not as cold as Ceres…
Keren looked at her, perplexed without taking offense.
I wanted to apologize on behalf of the old woman, but wasn’t sure how. “It’s from a skit,” I shouted after her, as the square of light led her around a corner. “It’s satire!”
It had been popularized by a satire show called “Ceres Tonight”, though not many knew that it was originally published as a mock-poem on Acher’s broadcast before being appropriated. He did not mind the theft, as long as his idea got around. And it did—at the time you could hear it sung by shopkeepers in their own shops, or murmured on a crowded train.
Keren must have come to Ceres after its popularity died down—We’d found it hilarious at the time, the words warm and alive, but now they felt as lifeless as the cold rock they were about.
#
“And now that you’re out of the box, how do you see what happened to you in there?” I asked as soon as I heard her steps around the corner.
“I think that it happened to someone else,” she said, giving me a look as if that were obvious. “I just remember it.”
“Do you seriously believe that?”
“Think about who you were as a child. Does that person still exist?”
“Listen, we have so little time. Couldn’t we spend it better -”
“There is little time only because you think there is. There’s nothing more important I could give you in this time. I’m going to clap my hands.” She raised her hands, a small distance apart. “And now here you are, anticipating the clap,” she paused for the briefest moment, then brought her hands together, creating a sharp, almost painful sound. “And here you are now, a man who remembers the clap, even though you don’t hear it anymore. You want to know me? Then tell me, are those two men the same man?”
I wanted to end this quickly, to move to a more interesting subject. “Yes. I still have his memories. I still remember what it was like to be him.”
“So it’s the memories that count?”
“If you deleted all my memories, I’d be a different person.”
“What if we did the opposite? If I told you all my memories, would you become me?” She laughed at something in her own head while the machine dispensed grey goo that had been designed as a form of torture; while she waited in line to be thrown out to die. I was impressed. “Wouldn’t it be funny if I told you all my memories, just talking and talking until I told you everything, and in the morning you woke up and went to my clinic and did my job and drank tea the way I like?”
I laughed too—not because I found it very funny, but because I enjoyed watching her laugh. I wanted to know what she did for work, but not enough to break this flow. “It would,” I said. “But telling someone your memories isn’t the same as remembering them yourself. The colors, the sensations, would be lost, or reimagined.”
“You mean, just like the brain does anyway?” The side of her lip curled in a way I had already learned to adore.
“It’s not the same thing.”
“You have some of the memories you had as a child, but they aren’t as detailed as they used to be, because what you have is memories of recalling those memories, like a story told from mouth to ear with little variations each time. So here you are now, in the present, holding onto memories that may or may not correspond to events in the past. It doesn’t matter whether or not they do – the past is gone and all you have are the things that are happening here, now, and your memories, which also only exist in the present.”
I wished I could understand what she meant, that we could have this grand truth to share, but it just seemed so… obvious. “If they have mostly the same memories, and behave in almost the same way, they’re still me, aren’t they?”
Her eyes narrowed, and that disappointment hurt more than anything she could have said. “That’s the answer you want, not your real answer.”
The squares moved, and we walked out, separately.
#
I was going to go insane in that cell, waiting to see her again. Waiting to talk to her again, waiting to have someone actually want something from me that I was able to provide.
#
“So, in that case,” she continued as if nothing changed. “Anyone that is sufficiently similar to you is another version of you?”
I hadn’t noticed when my hands went up to grab my head. “I can’t keep doing these conversations with these hours in between,” I said.” I feel like I’m losing my mind. Are you really that calm about this?”
She leaned towards me, as if she was going to grab my hands, then remembered our limitations and straightened. She spoke slower now, letting a heavy calm into her voice. “I know it’s hard for you. But please use the time you have to think about it. What’s the difference if it’s been a couple of hours in between, or a couple of seconds? When you’re in your cell, you’re waiting to be here, and when you’re here you’re thinking about the time you were in your cell. You’re not using your imagination.”
“You want me to imagine being somewhere else?”
“I want you to imagine we are having this conversation with no interruptions. When you are here, remember only our last conversation. Time isn’t continuous, it’s a string of separate moments that you can connect however you’d like. From now on, try to remember our conversations as one flow. These aren’t idle words.”
“And what about when I’m not here? I’m going insane, waiting in that little cell for the next time that we get to talk.” I’ve only known this woman for three days. Isn’t it a little early to come out with such declarations? Fuck it, she didn’t even seem taken aback.
“Let yourself.”
“Let myself do what?”
“Go insane. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“I...” I was just thinking about a way to use the time we’ve had left. Her bowl of porridge was halfway full, marking that we have spent half of our time together in this meal.
“You’re fighting for every second,” she said. “Don’t. We have time. Think about what I said for a second. Breath. Be free.”
We stood in silence then, watched things happen. She took her bowl away from the dispenser, and we stepped forward. The old woman put her bowl under the dispenser, and when it was full, took it away. “What’s wrong with you two? All silent so suddenly?”
Keren laughed, and so did I.
#
We buy a house. She already stays at my place most nights, and it isn’t large enough to be a home for two people, and definitely not for more.
The first night in the house we celebrate by getting drunk, making love. I make stupid promises about the future, and she admonishes me for even talking about the future, and says that only the now exists, and I laugh. We’re truly alive, not just because we’re having a good time, but because we’re making plans; because we have something to imagine. Because we have something to look forward to.
“Good morning, Yossef Ben Ze’ev,” the system announced, finding me awake this time, “You are to be provided with three meals…” And by the time it finished, I knew that I’d get to return to my bed and sleep again.