The Farthest City by Daniel P Swenson

Author:Daniel P Swenson
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Daniel P Swenson
Published: 2015-10-16T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19 – Gatherer

Kellen felt the urge to throw up, but nothing came.

“Get up, Kellen,” Abby said.

He couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

He lay there and refused to go anywhere. His body weighed more and more until he fell into a trance. It wasn’t like sleep. He maintained some remote awareness of what occurred outside of him as if he was in a closet looking through the keyhole, his vision blurred, sounds muffled.

Abby’s face appeared, her eyes anxious. “I’ll be back soon.”

Kellen’s senses continued to shrink, and his vision dimmed. His body no longer responded to his will. He felt himself being dragged across the ground and up another tunnel. Then he was swinging, something pulling him up and up. Then more dragging until he was laid prone.

“We never expected any of this,” Abby said.

“It happens to some new arrivals,” someone said. “They lose the will to exist.”

“And then?”

“This isn’t an easy place, even for those of us fighting to stay alive. Have you always taken human form?”

“Yes,” Abby said after a pause. “Always.”

“The others are curious. Some are angry. To them, humans are a part of our origin histories, or a myth as some would have it. But for most, humans are thought of with reverence.”

“I see,” Abby said. “We mean no disrespect.”

The voices faded.

Kellen felt better, as if he’d been cold for a long time and now was in a warm bed. Back in his apartment, he’d often fallen asleep like this, listening to the birds outside his window.

He woke later, lying on top of the canyon wall next to the solar cells. He sat up and contemplated the red sun. The sky was a beige-white, and the rocky landscape glinted in the dull light. The fatigue was gone, his mind alert. The urge to chew something, drink something tugged at him, but he remembered what Abby had said and knew it was true. It had been easy to miss it, to ignore the clues, when they’d been rushing from one strange place to another, but now he could no longer deny it. He wasn’t human. He was a chine.

He cried but no tears came. “I guess chines don’t need tears.”

“What?”

Abby had come up the canyon wall. “How are you?”

“Fine, I guess. As fine as I can be.”

“We brought you up here to charge.”

He lifted his shirt to examine the cables attached to his side where the flesh had been peeled away to uncover two round connections, like sockets. He averted his eyes, not wanting to see.

“You powered down,” she said.

They sat and watched the chines moving about down below.

“What does this mean?” he said, trying to keep the pleading out of his voice. “Are we still ourselves? Or just really good copies? Maybe we died back there under Jesup.”

“No,” she said. “We’re alive. I didn’t want this, either, but we’re not dead. Can’t you still feel? Even if it’s sadness?”

He could. Nothing good, but he felt. Or at least he thought he did. His fingers brushed a piece of rock on the ground.

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