CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Chaz:
I hadna€?t seen Mom for about a week. I guess Ia€?m about as guilty as the next guy when it comes to staying in touch. Especially when Ia€?m on a job, although thata€?s really no excuse.
The last time I saw her was on Tuesday. Or maybe it was Monday.
It was about 6 P.M. I usually go right after dinner. Watching one of the attendants feed her is a little more than I can handle. As liberated and open-minded as I try to be, I have to confess that sickness and death still bother me, probably more than they should, considering Ia€?m a One-Timer.
She was in bed, resting. I came in and sat beside her and waited. I knew she would open her eyes soon. As quiet as I was, I knew the smell would give me away. VR suits always give off an odor; some people say they smell like maple syrup, others say ita€?s more like vanilla cake. Since Ia€?m usually the one inside the suit I dona€?t really have an opinion. Virtual reality caught on big-time a few years before my father passed away, and Ia€?m sure thata€?s why he did what he did. He got caught up in the craze and wanted to give Mom an anniversary present she wouldna€?t forget.
Well, none of us ever forgot that one.
Like I said, Mom was in bed, silver hair smoothed on the pillow, her skin pink and paper-soft with age. Her hands lay at her side, elegant long fingers wearing rings of wrinkles at each joint. She had lost some weight. The monitor over her headboard registered 101 LBS. in glowing red numbers. Her pulse, temperature, blood pressure, electrolytes and cholesterol were all readily visible, along with a few other numbers that I never could figure out. I glanced at the cheat sheet I had brought with me, compared the current numbers with what they had been last time.
She was fading away. Pretty soon she would just vanish. All her numbers would read zero and her spirit would sail away.
When I finally got the courage to lift my gaze from my mothera€?s frail body, I saw him. Damn holo has uncanny timing. Right when I looked across the room to the corner, where I knew it wasa€”this supernatural, super-spooky, three-dimensional rendition of my father when he was thirty-eight years olda€”it looked up and stared right back at me. And smiled.
A tear formed and slid down my cheek.
I hate that holo.
He looked just like he did right before he died. Dad never grew old. Never got gray hair or wrinkles. So this creature that occasionally flickers and skips with a hiss and a crackle actually looks a lot like me.
Ita€?s disconcerting to outlive your own father. To realize that every year after this one will be one more than he had.
Mom woke up right about then, when I was analyzing the miserable lack of accomplishment in my life, when I was silently cursing a technology that could keep a virtual ghost of my father alive forever but couldna€?t find a cure for what was slowly killing my mother.
a€?Hi, sweetheart.a€?
She reached out and touched my VR arm with her hand, a caress as soft as velvet. Thata€?s as close as wea€?re going to get, until her last few minutes and the doctors allow us to actually go inside her quarantined room. Ita€?s not so much that theya€?re afraid we might catch what she has. Ita€?s more that what we have might kill her. A cold. A flu. Some random bacteria, happy to live innocuously on our skin, but much more excited to leap into her compromised immune system and develop into pneumonia or tuberculosis or tularemia. All deadly.
a€?Hi, Mom. How do you feel?a€?
Her eyes glittered, a pale blue sky filled with diamonds, like stars in the morning.
a€?Better now, honey. Always better when you are here.a€?
She smiled.
My mother is dying and we are surrounded by a world filled with people who refuse to die. We are the ones who give them more life.
And yet, this is the only one she wants.
I return her smile. And I refuse to cry.