I decided to put something together and submit a story. This past Friday, they sent out "the emails", letting people know whether or not they'd been selected. I was not selected. Like many of the other rejectees, I decided to put it up online, for you all to read, without having to buy a book! Or me getting paid! (Seriously, though, I would recommend the book. The first volume was pretty awesome. Second one probably will be, too.)
Holding up Traffic…in Bed
Sitting on the windowsill and leaning against the screen, you watch the stream of people, seven stories below, the pedestrians walking the sidewalks, the drivers pushing their cars through traffic. It amazes you the way they keep trudging forward, keep going on with their lives, focusing on their next meeting, their next meal, willfully ignorant that there might not be one, that today could be the last day they have.
Being ignorant of the inevitability of death was once as basic as breathing. Since LexiCo introduced the Machine of Death to the world, few, if any, have been able to escape wrestling with the reality of their final fate. The fad started slowly, as people weren’t sure they wanted to know their ultimate fate, but curiosity soon trumped fear, and people flocked in droves to malls and doctors’ offices, queuing up by the hundreds, shelling out hard-earned cash to get the cryptic reading.
There are those who have resisted. Some argue that the lack of privacy of The Machine and its readings is unethical, as you can walk into almost any mall and get your reading. Others argue against the moral and religious implications of mankind worshipping a machine. The more vocal opposition groups protest outside buildings whose occupants advertise and advocate the use of The Machine. Though you understand their fears – you still haven’t managed to overcome your own– you think they are missing the point. Not knowing the ending will not prevent it from happening. Knowing is better than not knowing. It has to be. Knowing would be liberating, you tell yourself. It would allow you to take chances, do things you’ve been too scared to try.
“You’re so naïve,” your brother would say. He didn’t like The Machine, and didn’t want you to get your reading. “Don’t you understand anything about human nature? Sure, people feel liberated at first, and a few people might actually change their lives. By and large, though, you’ll see people tuck the slip away and forget about it, like the fortunes they get from cookies at Chinese restaurants.”
He had a point. There is a ghoulish, though entertaining, website entirely devoted to people submitting their readings and adding the words, “in bed,” turning them from vague predictions into something vaguely dirty, the way teenagers add the same two words onto fortune cookie sayings. Some of your favorites include, “EATEN BY COUGARS…IN BED,” and “SMOTHERED BY DELICIOUS CAKE…IN BED.” That’s just how some people deal with the knowledge. Some laugh at it, some try to forget about it, but not all of them.
“The problem is,” your brother would continue, “The predictions come true. So what’s the point of trying to change anything? You’re going to get shot by a mugger, or have a heart attack going to Chicago, so what’s it matter?”
You didn’t agree with him then, and you don’t now. He’s a cynic, a contrarian. Whatever was popular, he disliked. When that fad fell out of style, he lamented its passing while tearing apart the new. Naturally, he would meet any positive spin on the wildly popular Machine of Death craze with staunch disdain. He’s trying to be the protective older brother, but you know that he wouldn’t be as protective if The Machine wasn’t so popular.
A flash of lights from the street below catches your eye. A group of pedestrians gathers on the sidewalk, held back by a ring of police officers, creating a semicircle near the base of your building. At the center, medics tend to something under a black plastic sheet, a dark stain spreading outward under their feet. A body. Someone died right in front of your building. You wonder if they’d visited a Machine of Death, if they’d gotten a reading, and if so, what it said. HOLDING UP TRAFFIC, you think, noting the cop directing the cars around the scene, then mentally tack on IN BED. It sounds like the prediction of someone who would die while sleeping with a prostitute.
Closing your eyes, you take a deep breath and calm your nerves. “Today is the day,” you tell yourself, willing yourself to follow through, finally. “Today is the day I find out.”
At the mall, you walk over to the kiosk, but don’t get in line. Instead, you find a place off to the side, opposite the young man tending to the till, where you can stand and watch as the customers step up to the brushed silver box, insert their finger into the padded hole, and get their reading. Feeling a stab of guilt, you find yourself entranced by the looks on their faces as they read the little slip of paper.
Some look relieved; more often, they look scared. Some people already have tears in their eyes as they insert their finger. You see one teen taunted by his small group of friends, teased for being afraid of the reading. They all got their readings, but he held out. He tries to explain that he just isn’t interested, but he can’t convince them, and so he throws down his money, signs the release, and thrusts his finger into the hole, glaring at his friends. The printer clicks and whirs, spewing forth his prediction. Snatching it quickly, he looks at it, then up at his friends. His printout reads EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT.
Certain things hold true. The younger the customer, the more likely they are to act excited upon receiving the prediction. The older customers tend to receive the news with grim acceptance. Many walk away simply baffled by their predictions. One woman, around middle age, reads her slip, left index finger still hovering near the port, then looks up at the teenage attendant. He tells her, in the flat voice of rote memorization, “Neither I, nor LexiCo, nor the Skyebrook Mall are responsible for predictions made by the MoriSense 800, nor the actualization of said prophecies. Please move out of the way and allow the next customer to be read.”
A sign below The Machine spells this out, as well as a variety of other legal clauses, absolving both companies, as well as any and all employees, of any responsibility. It also explains the impossibility of fully testing the infallibility of The Machine, that any and all predictions are purely for entertainment purposes, and that absolutely no refunds will be given.
The next customer in line, a younger woman with curly brown hair, taps her on the shoulder. She steps aside, still bewildered, not realizing at first that the other woman was actually asking to see the prediction. In a clear voice, louder than she intended, the woman says, “MAROONED IN SPACE, BUT NOT IN TIME,” she says, then blinks a few times. “I don’t... I can’t…,” she says before wandering back down the mall towards the food court.
The attendant takes the younger woman’s money indifferently, has her sign a release, and instructs her to insert her finger. She holds her finger up in front of the port for a few seconds, deliberating, controlling her breathing. The attendant sighs loudly, rolling his eyes.
* * *
Until he left, your brother made it a point to call you weekly. “Are still obsessed with that damn Machine?” he asked during one phone call, just over two years ago. “Alright, meet me at Skyebrook Tuesday night.”
You met him at the Food Court, and walked down the mostly empty mall corridor. “If I can’t talk you out of getting your reading, maybe I can give you an object lesson.”
The two of you approached the kiosk, you a step behind your brother, in awe of The Machine, gleaming under a couple of floodlights. Your brother strode up to it as though it were any other mall kiosk and stood at the back of the short line. The two people in front of them got their readings and walked away. Your brother paid the teen, telling him curtly, “Just one,” with a glance at you. The teen, shrugged with disinterest, and gestured towards The Machine.
You suppressed a yelp as he jammed his finger into the port, all the way up to the knuckle. “Gently,” you said to him. He gave you a sharp, angry look, and then returned his attention to The Machine, now whirring to life. He grabbed the slip without looking at it and led you away from the kiosk. Near the wall of the corridor, he wheeled to face you, the folded slip of paper held up between your faces.
“This is just a slip of paper,” he said. “It will tell me how I die, but it cannot tell me how I will live. Do you understand that?” You weren’t entirely sure that you did, but you nodded. He handed you the slip. Unfolding it, the blood drained from your face; an icy knot formed in your chest as you read the large, black, block letters.
COMPLICATIONS FROM PARALYSIS
* * *
You watch a slender young man approach, pay with a credit card, and slide his finger slowly into the port. Closing his eyes, he mouths the words, please no, over and over as The Machine whirs and clicks, analyzing his blood sample. The small white slip of paper slides out from the little slot; he takes it with his free hand while sliding his finger out of the port.
Stepping towards you, he reads the printout, his face pale, shoulders sagging. His hand goes limp, and the paper falls to the floor, fluttering towards you. Lunging forward, you try to pick it up for him, but he beats you to it. As he picks it up, though, you catch sight of most of the reading.
BOTCHED SEX CH—
Snatching it up, he stuffs it into his pocket, then darts past you up the mall corridor. His footsteps fade to silence, and you realize that you’re all alone. The mall is closing, maybe even already closed. The stores around you are gated and dark, and even the MoriSense attendant has ducked away, leaving The Machine unattended.
Standing in front of it, you eye the finger port, a hole about the size of a silver dollar, padded with foam rubber, so that the actual opening is just a slit. You imagine sliding your finger in, the rubber giving, but also holding snugly, pulling your finger deeper and deeper inside the chamber, still warm from previous customers, slightly moist from the disinfectant. Pulse quickening, your finger throbs as the machine slowly squeezes, inducing blood flow to the tip. A quick hiss of air licks at your finger as the needle pricks you, a lightning-fast bite on the pad, penetrating just far enough to extract a few drops of blood and withdraw. Tiny jets of disinfectant shower your finger as you pull out; it evaporates quickly, leaving your finger cool and tingly as you await the results, trying to catch your breath.
Your fingers already tingle as you try to work up the nerve to insert one. Index digit raised, you inch closer to it. The mall is quiet and still, as though empty and abandoned, only you and The Machine remaining. The only lights the two flood lights illuminating the MoriSense 800, a gleaming silver box, waiting for you, drawing you closer, urging you to insert a finger.
* * *
The window opposite yours in the building across the street looks into the apartment of a young couple who has neglected to draw the shades. You’re not a voyeur, but you find yourself watching the couple as they lay out a nice dinner, perhaps for an anniversary. Today is an anniversary for you, too. One year since you first said, “Today is the day.” One year since you vowed you would receive your fate; a full year of going to the mall, eyeing the kiosk, and chickening out.
It’s been almost two years since the first letter from your brother, containing a postcard from some sunny island in the South Pacific. He had disappeared a couple of weeks earlier, leaving a note in his apartment stating that anything still there should be sold off, donated, or simply thrown in the trash. His reading had troubled him more than he wanted anyone to know. The Machine’s prediction had affected your brother in a way that he had not expected.
I thought that knowing wouldn’t be any different than not knowing. I thought that if it were meant to be, then knowing wouldn’t matter. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen, and until then, life would go on. That isn’t the case for me, though. Someday, something will happen that will leave me paralyzed, and some complication thereof will lead to my death. I couldn’t just sit around and wait for that to happen. There’s so much to see in this world, so much to do, that I had to take advantage of whatever time I have left, be it a day, a month or 30 years.
He trekked across the US, then up into Canada. He worked on a fishing boat to pay his way to Japan, the source of the letter. The postcard was his next destination. Your parents tried to go there, but found no available commercial flights from the US, and any other option was out of their price range.
The purpose of his letters in those first few weeks seemed to be less about letting you and the rest of the family know that he was alive and what he was doing, and more about convincing you that his turnaround, his embracing of life via the prediction of his death was the exception, and not the rule. He didn’t want you to use The Machine; he still wanted to protect you from it.
Most predictions spell out only the end. Mine did not. Yours might not, either, but what if it does? I met a man whose prediction read, “FRESH AIR.” He refuses to go outside, even though whatever’s in the air could take 50 years to kill him.
As time passed, though, his tone changed; his letters began to sound more like sermons.
I have joined a church – The First Church of The Machine. By the time you read this, I will be an ordained minister. I joined the church a month ago, but this is merely the culmination of a process that started long before that. Truthfully, the day I got my reading was the day I awoke, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. I have been spreading the news of my awakening for more than the past year, letting the world know of the joys of The Machine, how it changed my life, how knowing how my life will end liberated me. With the Church’s backing, I will now get to travel the globe, spreading the message.
The letters strengthened your resolve to use The Machine, to get your reading, but they couldn’t overcome your fear. Unable to forget the way you felt upon seeing your brother’s printout, every time you went to the mall, you’d freeze up, and then leave, feeling like a wimp. You tried going early in the morning, before you’d thought too much about it, but always thought about what it would be like spending the rest of the day knowing. Going at night was problematic; you worried you wouldn’t be able to sleep.
One time, you called a friend on your cell phone while in the queue, hoping to distract yourself enough with idle chatter to pay, insert your finger, and get your reading, but when you approached the woman tending the kiosk, the gleaming machine caught your eye. You froze in mid sentence, withdrew your money, and walked quickly down the mall, trying to put as much distance between yourself and the MoriSense 800 as possible without running.
Every day you steeled yourself for the task, and every day you folded.
* * *
The sidewalks below your building, illuminated by streetlights, are empty, save for the occasional person heading home from work, or dinner, or just a nighttime walk. Just two bright orange cones that could signify anything mark off the spot almost directly below your window, where the crowd had gathered. The occasional passersby pay no attention to them, or the bloodstain in between.
That stain is all that remains of a person who, just a few hours ago, was walking around in your city. Maybe they lived in your building. Perhaps it was someone you might have met one day. Suddenly, you don’t want to get your reading. You realize there is plenty of life to be lived, and you don’t need a few words on a slip of paper to go out there and live it. It is possible to live a full life, even without knowing your fate.
Looking down at your hand, a small slip of paper catches your eye. A few words, in bold, black, block text printed on it. A fortune. Someone’s Machine readout. It couldn’t be, though. Where would you have gotten it? People don’t leave them lying around. Studies have shown that people tend to be more protective of their reading than of their social security cards, even after death. You’ve read stories about medical examiners having to break the fingers of corpses just to pry out the readings.
The wind shifts, and the window screen flutters, banging against the frame. How long has it been loose? This is where you come to sit and think, to breathe some fresh air, to clear your head. If the screen ever came loose, you would fall out the window, nothing but open air between you and the sidewalk below. You peer carefully down at the sidewalk again. Suddenly, you know.
The wind rushed in your ears as you tumbled headlong into the night; your stomach fluttering, trying to cope with the sudden and radical acceleration, your brain trying to rationalize your new disposition. Just as you adjusted to the fall, the ground rose up to meet you with a sickening crack of bones that disappeared as suddenly as it started, and all is silence. Someone would have seen, and would have come running, would have called 911, but help arrived too late. The police and medics showed up and tossed a sheet over your body, like a bed sheet.
Inspecting your index finger, you see the tiny red dot, the scar of prescience. The wind causes the slip of paper to flutter in your other hand. You already know, and wish you didn’t. Holding it up, you read the words, HOLDING UP TRAFFIC…IN BED.
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