A fight broke out two nights ago. Blood still stains the
halls. I hate myself for not foreseeing it.
I had fallen asleep without looking through Kailash’s missives to Earth, after working an extra shift in the garden to ensure our grapes and blackberries could twine over some ancient bits and pieces from the old computers before Zariah and Yuda gutted them. I said a trellis would be better, but we do not have the material to spare for printing an elaborate piece of equipment. And yet it is important to keep the vines from strangling our other plants, so we use the scrap we have.
I have been too tired and I did not see this coming. Yvain has been very tired as well, from his own physical exertion with the anti-union group, but I don’t know how he didn’t see their plan coming to fruition. Maybe he sympathizes with them more than I thought. Or maybe he is more on the side of the unionizers? It is so hard to know what anyone’s motives are, because they are not for survival alone.
And now our chances for survival are even lower. So many people were hurt in that fight, they will be loopy on our painkillers – draining the last of our medical supplies to the dregs – and they will be unable to work, I am sure of it. Ihsan stayed out of the fight this time, fortunately, and she and Bulus helped me stitch up the wounded. Actual stitches with sterile silk-carbon thread, too valuable to use on these shiftless, thankless people, but I sewed them back together anyway, against every nerve fiber that screamed for me to let them contract an alien infection and die.
We have a smattering of bandages and antivirals and vaccines, but everything else is gone. And Chloe, Guo, Dagon, Cyril, Samira, Suharto, Zariah, Kailash, Rusul, Fletcher, and Haven are all injured. Some have broken bones, and Ghadir thinks we may not have enough calcium in our diets for their bones to knit properly. She is concocting a slimy kelp soup to force down their throats, hopefully bolstering their immune responses and bone knitting cells. They are taking large doses of antibacterials as well, to keep them from getting sick on the water and air. On their separate sides of the colony, they gobble painkillers and laugh triumphantly. I don’t think either side won.
Vahan is gravely ill. He took part in the fight and lost a lot of blood, and I don’t know what to do for him. There are medications that can help his heart, he says, but they are expensive and he has not taken them in years, and Breathe Easy certainly would not send them our way, no matter how nicely we asked. His face is pale, and his hands shake. He lost a lot of blood, because a broken nose did not clot well enough and deep cuts on his arms and chest leeched the rest of what he had. At least one person brought a knife to the fight, and I wonder who it was.
Haven hasn’t bothered to visit her partner. I spent the whole day yesterday with him, and Yvain frequently stopped in to bring water or soup.
I don’t want Vahan to die, but I find myself imagining the day, and I feel the weight of worry lift and I’m confused. I like him, he is a refugee of a broken system just like I am, and there is no reason to wish for his demise. He is not a likely target for assassination, because he is not a ringleader for the anti-unionists – just a pawn in their self-immolating demonstration. So he will suffer to the end.
I asked him yesterday how he wanted to die. I have never had to ask anyone that before. The Gadhavi could only prescribe medication and recommend treatments, but it is the Senfte customer assistants that talk to patients about their death options. It is the Ikin that dispose of the bodies. It is Arany talk show hosts and self-help gurus whose ideologies inform the process of dying. It has never been my place to know anything about it, other than the fact that it will happen to me someday, and I will not likely be missed.
But it seemed important to ask, because Vahan is Bakalov, and stubborn and loyal. He clings to this idea of personal uselessness, which led directly to his slow and agonizing death from … I don’t know what. Infection or internal bleeding. Who can know.
“I feel like Cyril should lean over me and give me reasons for everything that’s happened to me before I go,” he said, half a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.
“Do you want me to get him for you?” My voice held more of a knife’s edge than I intended, a knife that certainly was not for Vahan.
He coughed, which I think was an attempt at laughter. I offered him a glass with thick, foggy water, but he waved me away. “No, of course not, he wouldn’t come even if you asked. I don’t know how we can have a death ritual here, anyway. Maybe Kailash should give me my options?”
I shrugged, but I couldn’t let go of the anger forging in the hot pit of my stomach. I answered, “I don’t think Kailash or anyone should give you your death options. They used you. You should at least choose for yourself, in the end.”
“Bakalovs do not get to choose their way,” he said. He began coughing again.
“Think about it,” I answered.
He died this morning. Kailash forced Fletcher and Abbas to remove the body and dump it in a container in one of the least-used storage rooms until he could figure out what to do with it. Cyril muttered some words as the body passed by him in the hall, but he didn’t attempt to follow or intervene further. I can see why the Arany did not want him anymore.
I think the only thing keeping the peace is the physical damage each side inflicted on the other. Neither side is trained well enough in the art of restraint, Yvain thinks, but I would never suggest that most military men have no restraint and that is the problem. He’s the only one I ever met, and even he smuggled weapons until abuse and a discharge forced him to stop.
He has not been sleeping on the floor, but I have worked through the night to avoid sleeping in the same bed as him. The garden has become all-important to me. I harvest seaweed throughout the night, clean fish and bivalves and leave them in the common room for Ghadir, make stripes of kelp, harvest lettuce, turn the compost, and pluck the brown leaves from our cucumbers, grapes, squash, and herbs. I think the water has become so tainted that even the plants can barely drink it. If we humans did not eat so much soup, I don’t think we would stay hydrated enough.
I spend my days, when I am awake, in the air filtration tubes, checking the algae – none of which have been sabotaged since the day Yuda and I saw the sliced bags – and changing air filters, then changing filters where I know how in the water system and waste systems. The only people I run into are Ihsan and Bulus, and sometimes Durada, as she pulls buckets of waste out of that system for the compost heap.
If I look at Chloe and Zariah and Rusul and Kailash in the eye, I am afraid I will reflect back the senseless, selfish, divisive hatred and something inside me will explode. I fear I will kill someone, and it will feel like self-defense because they are trying to let me die.
I had fallen asleep without looking through Kailash’s missives to Earth, after working an extra shift in the garden to ensure our grapes and blackberries could twine over some ancient bits and pieces from the old computers before Zariah and Yuda gutted them. I said a trellis would be better, but we do not have the material to spare for printing an elaborate piece of equipment. And yet it is important to keep the vines from strangling our other plants, so we use the scrap we have.
I have been too tired and I did not see this coming. Yvain has been very tired as well, from his own physical exertion with the anti-union group, but I don’t know how he didn’t see their plan coming to fruition. Maybe he sympathizes with them more than I thought. Or maybe he is more on the side of the unionizers? It is so hard to know what anyone’s motives are, because they are not for survival alone.
And now our chances for survival are even lower. So many people were hurt in that fight, they will be loopy on our painkillers – draining the last of our medical supplies to the dregs – and they will be unable to work, I am sure of it. Ihsan stayed out of the fight this time, fortunately, and she and Bulus helped me stitch up the wounded. Actual stitches with sterile silk-carbon thread, too valuable to use on these shiftless, thankless people, but I sewed them back together anyway, against every nerve fiber that screamed for me to let them contract an alien infection and die.
We have a smattering of bandages and antivirals and vaccines, but everything else is gone. And Chloe, Guo, Dagon, Cyril, Samira, Suharto, Zariah, Kailash, Rusul, Fletcher, and Haven are all injured. Some have broken bones, and Ghadir thinks we may not have enough calcium in our diets for their bones to knit properly. She is concocting a slimy kelp soup to force down their throats, hopefully bolstering their immune responses and bone knitting cells. They are taking large doses of antibacterials as well, to keep them from getting sick on the water and air. On their separate sides of the colony, they gobble painkillers and laugh triumphantly. I don’t think either side won.
Vahan is gravely ill. He took part in the fight and lost a lot of blood, and I don’t know what to do for him. There are medications that can help his heart, he says, but they are expensive and he has not taken them in years, and Breathe Easy certainly would not send them our way, no matter how nicely we asked. His face is pale, and his hands shake. He lost a lot of blood, because a broken nose did not clot well enough and deep cuts on his arms and chest leeched the rest of what he had. At least one person brought a knife to the fight, and I wonder who it was.
Haven hasn’t bothered to visit her partner. I spent the whole day yesterday with him, and Yvain frequently stopped in to bring water or soup.
I don’t want Vahan to die, but I find myself imagining the day, and I feel the weight of worry lift and I’m confused. I like him, he is a refugee of a broken system just like I am, and there is no reason to wish for his demise. He is not a likely target for assassination, because he is not a ringleader for the anti-unionists – just a pawn in their self-immolating demonstration. So he will suffer to the end.
I asked him yesterday how he wanted to die. I have never had to ask anyone that before. The Gadhavi could only prescribe medication and recommend treatments, but it is the Senfte customer assistants that talk to patients about their death options. It is the Ikin that dispose of the bodies. It is Arany talk show hosts and self-help gurus whose ideologies inform the process of dying. It has never been my place to know anything about it, other than the fact that it will happen to me someday, and I will not likely be missed.
But it seemed important to ask, because Vahan is Bakalov, and stubborn and loyal. He clings to this idea of personal uselessness, which led directly to his slow and agonizing death from … I don’t know what. Infection or internal bleeding. Who can know.
“I feel like Cyril should lean over me and give me reasons for everything that’s happened to me before I go,” he said, half a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.
“Do you want me to get him for you?” My voice held more of a knife’s edge than I intended, a knife that certainly was not for Vahan.
He coughed, which I think was an attempt at laughter. I offered him a glass with thick, foggy water, but he waved me away. “No, of course not, he wouldn’t come even if you asked. I don’t know how we can have a death ritual here, anyway. Maybe Kailash should give me my options?”
I shrugged, but I couldn’t let go of the anger forging in the hot pit of my stomach. I answered, “I don’t think Kailash or anyone should give you your death options. They used you. You should at least choose for yourself, in the end.”
“Bakalovs do not get to choose their way,” he said. He began coughing again.
“Think about it,” I answered.
He died this morning. Kailash forced Fletcher and Abbas to remove the body and dump it in a container in one of the least-used storage rooms until he could figure out what to do with it. Cyril muttered some words as the body passed by him in the hall, but he didn’t attempt to follow or intervene further. I can see why the Arany did not want him anymore.
I think the only thing keeping the peace is the physical damage each side inflicted on the other. Neither side is trained well enough in the art of restraint, Yvain thinks, but I would never suggest that most military men have no restraint and that is the problem. He’s the only one I ever met, and even he smuggled weapons until abuse and a discharge forced him to stop.
He has not been sleeping on the floor, but I have worked through the night to avoid sleeping in the same bed as him. The garden has become all-important to me. I harvest seaweed throughout the night, clean fish and bivalves and leave them in the common room for Ghadir, make stripes of kelp, harvest lettuce, turn the compost, and pluck the brown leaves from our cucumbers, grapes, squash, and herbs. I think the water has become so tainted that even the plants can barely drink it. If we humans did not eat so much soup, I don’t think we would stay hydrated enough.
I spend my days, when I am awake, in the air filtration tubes, checking the algae – none of which have been sabotaged since the day Yuda and I saw the sliced bags – and changing air filters, then changing filters where I know how in the water system and waste systems. The only people I run into are Ihsan and Bulus, and sometimes Durada, as she pulls buckets of waste out of that system for the compost heap.
If I look at Chloe and Zariah and Rusul and Kailash in the eye, I am afraid I will reflect back the senseless, selfish, divisive hatred and something inside me will explode. I fear I will kill someone, and it will feel like self-defense because they are trying to let me die.
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