“Absinthe is the boat that carries people back to their past,” she says. “A Sandman, its captain, cannot point it in two directions at the same time. There’s no place for him in the present. That’s the burden you must bear.”
Chapter Three
Aris crosses a walkway that connects her building to another. The lush paths are old train tracks, repurposed after the need for them disappeared. In the spring, they explode with the bright colors of wildflowers. Now, greens and blues dominate.
Clusters of free-flowing grass sway next to the rigid rosemary shrubs and leggy lavender. The silvery blue of pygmy eucalyptus trees erupts from the green bushes below. Black-eyed Susans—bright yellow with dark centers—repeat every twenty meters.
Along both sides of the walkway are plants of various textures and shapes. Tall and skinny. Short and round. Petite and fragile. Some are feathery. Some are broad and rigid. Some wear their leaves like fur, their limbs laden with thick foliage that cast green light over the path.
She breaks off a sprig of lavender and crushes the head between her fingers. She brings it to her nose and breathes the scent in before dropping it in her coffee. The purple bud floats in the java sea.
A breeze sends the leaves swaying, surrounding Aris with a rushing sound like running water. There is a slight chill in the air. She looks up and notices a speck of orange on a leaf in one of the trees. It is almost imperceptible, but a beginning nonetheless. She looks at her watch.
Right on time.
Everything here runs on a tight schedule. The seasons and all they affect—the weather, the plants, the animals—follow the designed rhythm of the constructed ecosystem. Just as the Planner had intended. Callisto was modeled after the city of his childhood. It was the first to be created. The seat of all the councils. The most populous. The center of the Four Cities.
A young couple passes her, their black clothes crumpled from last night’s dalliance. Their hands are like tentacles around each other.
“A week,” she mumbles to herself as she sips her coffee.
A striking old woman with platinum hair catches her eye. She is sitting on a bench under a fan of lacy-leafed Japanese maples. In her cupped hands, a bird pecks at seeds. Mesmerized, Aris approaches her.
“Hello,” Aris says.
“Hello, dear,” the old lady says.
“It trusts you,” she says, staring at the bird in the old woman’s hands.
“He likes my seeds. They all do. Here, take some from the bag.” The old lady gives her an encouraging smile.
Aris finds a spot next to her and pours some seeds onto her open palm. A bird hops into her hand and begins pecking. Her face breaks into a wide smile.
“See, he trusts you too,” says the old lady.
Another couple walks by. One woman is dressed in a suit, the other in jeans and a T-shirt. They kiss and separate. The woman in jeans stops, turns, and runs back for another kiss. Aris raises her eyebrows.
“Three months if she tries really hard,” she says under her breath.
“What did you say, dear?” asks the old woman.
“Oh nothing,” she says, smiling. “Just a thing I do. I guess how long a couple will stay together. It’s fascinating how pairing seems a compulsion in some.”
The old lady laughs. “A compulsion is right.”
“It’s so outdated and irrelevant, don’t you think?”
Aris doesn’t understand why a person would waste an entire cycle on another. Coupling had once been useful to provide a stable environment to raise offspring. But bearing and raising the young is no longer a burden on the populace. Children are medically conceived and born at the Center of Discovery and Learning. Quality and quantity control. It’s vital to managing resources. Just enough. No excess, no waste.
“Oh, it’s not so irrelevant,” the old lady says. “Being in love is a wondrous thing.”
“But isn’t it a waste?”
“Why would you say that?”
“What’s the point when everything will be wiped away?” Aris says.
“One day when you find yourself in love, you will know exactly the point to it, dear.”
The old woman gestures for her to look across the way. On a bench under the shade of another maple tree sit a man and a woman. The woman leans her head against the man’s shoulder. Their hands intertwine like a pattern on a woven basket. He kisses her hair, inhaling her scent.
“That’s love,” says the old woman.
Aris looks at them. Sadness washes over her. It is like watching a drawing in sand. The tide will soon roll in, wiping it from existence. Her hand automatically goes to her watch. She does not look at it. She already knows.
Half a year.
All that’s left.
The elevator to the subway is packed, usual for a workday. The glass elevator, built into a corner of the building, gives her a clear view of the city block. Through the transparent floor she sees passersby moving along the crowded streets like dry leaves floating on streams.
One minute she sees them from a bird’s-eye view, the next their faces, then their feet before she disappears below ground. Her stomach sinks. Her ears pop. She shakes one ear with her fingers. She never gets used to the feeling of falling from a great height.
The elevator stops at the subway level, deep underground. The door opens to a busy intersection. Signs mark the directions to Europa, Lysithea, and Elara. All paths but to Elara are filled with people. No one ever goes there except for the Ceremony of the Dead. It was the last city the Planner erected and was still under construction when the bombs lit up the world. Its weather system is not regulated like the other three, making it the closest to the natural habitat of the Mojave Desert. Aris does not know how many people live there, but she can’t imagine the number to be high.
She heads toward the local train that travels within her city. On the platform, she finds her favorite circle.
