First Shift - Legacy

communicate with the Senator through the door so he didn’t have to go any further. It felt like he couldn’t breathe; he needed to get out. There was no wheel on the outer door. Everything had been taken out of his control—

The inner locks clanked. Donald lunged for the door and tried the handle. Holding his breath, he opened the hatch and escaped the small airlock for the larger chamber in the center of the pill.

“Donald!” Senator Thurman looked up from a thick book. He was sprawled out on one of the benches running the length of the long cylinder. A notepad and pen sat on a small table; a plastic tray held the remnants of dinner.

“Hello, sir.” He said this with the minimal parting of his lips.

“Don’t just stand there, get in. You’re letting the buggers out.”

Against his every impulse, Donald stepped through and pushed the door shut, and Senator Thurman laughed. “You might as well breathe, son. They could crawl right through your skin if they wanted to.”

Donald let out his held breath and shivered. If he’d been alone, or with anyone else, he would’ve performed his where-did-the-insect-go? dance, which entailed flapping his arms and stomping around the room until he was sure the creature was no longer on him. It may have been his imagination, but he thought he felt little pinpricks all over his skin, bites like Savannah’s no-see-ems on summer days.

“You can’t feel ’em,” Senator Thurman said. “It’s all in your head. They know the difference between you and me.”

Donald glanced down and realized he was scratching his arm.

“Have a seat.” Thurman gestured to the bench opposite his. He had the same color scrubs on and a few days’ growth on his chin. Donald noticed the far end of the capsule opened onto a small bathroom, a showerhead with a flexible hose clipped to the wall. Thurman swung his bare feet off the bench and grabbed a half-empty bottle of water, took a sip. Donald obeyed and sat down, a nervous sweat tickling his scalp. A stack of folded blankets and a few pillows sat at the end of the bench. He saw how the frames folded open into cots but couldn’t imagine being able to sleep in this little coffin.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” He tried to keep his voice from cracking. The air tasted metallic, a hint of the machines on his tongue. He could picture them there with their little legs and claws, roaming about.

“Drink?” The Senator opened a small fridge below the bench and pulled out a bottle of water.

“Thanks.” Donald accepted the water but didn’t open it, just enjoyed the cool against his palm. “Mick said he filled you in.” He wanted to add that this meeting felt unnecessary.

Thurman nodded. “He did. Met with him yesterday. He’s a solid boy.” The Senator smiled and shook his head. “The irony is, this class we just swore in? Probably the best bunch the Hill has seen in a very long time.”

“The irony?” Donald pressed the cool plastic water bottle against his wrist, where his mind was playing tricks on him with imaginary bug bites.

Thurman waved his hand, shooing the question away. “You know what I love about this treatment?”

Practically living forever? Donald nearly asked.

“It gives you time to think. A few days in here, nothing with batteries allowed, just a few books to read and something to write on, it really clears your head.”

Donald kept his opinions to himself. He didn’t want to admit how creeped out the procedure made him, how terrifying it was to be in that room right then. He hated hospitals in general, always feared he would catch something. Knowing that tiny machines were coursing through the Senator’s body, picking through his individual cells and making repairs, grossed him out. Supposedly, your urine turned the color of charcoal once all the machines shut down. He wondered if that would be true for him, just sitting there and breathing the same air.

He trembled at the thought.

“Isn’t that nice?” Thurman asked. He took in a deep breath and let it out. “That quiet?”

Donald didn’t answer. He realized he was holding his breath again.

Thurman looked down at the book in his lap, then lifted his gaze and studied Donald for a few breaths.

“Did you know your grandfather taught me how to play golf?”

Donald laughed. “Yeah. I’ve seen the pictures of you two together.” He flashed back to his grandmother flipping through old albums. She had this weird thing about printing the pictures off her computer and stuffing them in books. Said they became more real once they were displayed like that.

“You and your sister have always felt like family to me,” the Senator said.

“Well, I appreciate that, sir.” Donald cracked the cap on his water and took a sip. The Senator had definitely been locked up too long. He remembered a night in college when Mick had gotten sloshed and “opened up to him.” It was uncomfortable. A small vent in the corner of the pod circulated some air, but it still felt warm in there.

“I want you in on this project,” Thurman said. “All the way in.”

Donald swallowed. “Sir. I’m fully committed, I promise.”

Thurman raised his hand and shook his head. “No, not like—” He dropped his hand to his lap, glanced at the door, then at one of the small portholes. “You know, I used to think you couldn’t hide anything anymore. Not in this age. It’s all out there, you know?” He waggled his fingers in the air. “Hell, you ran for office and squeezed through that mess. You know what it’s like.”

Donald nodded. “Yeah, I had a few things I had to own up to.”

The Senator cupped his hands into a bowl. “It’s like trying to hold water and not letting a single drop through.”

Taking another sip from his bottle, Donald nodded.

“A president can’t even get a blow job anymore without the world finding out.”

Donald’s confused squint had Thurman waving at the air. “Before your time. But here’s the thing, here’s what I’ve found, both overseas and in Washington. It’s the unimportant drips that leak through. The peccadilloes. Embarrassments, not life and death stuff. You want to invade a foreign country? Look at D-Day. Hell, look at Pearl Harbor. Or 9/11. Not a problem.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t see what—”

Thurman’s hand flew out, his fingers snapping together as he pinched the air. Donald thought for a moment that he meant for him to not interrupt, to keep quiet, but then the Senator leaned forward and held the pinched pads of his fingers for Donald to see, like he had snatched a mosquito.

“Look,” he said.

Donald leaned closer, but he still couldn’t make anything out. He shook his head. “I don’t see, sir—”

“That’s right. And you wouldn’t see it coming, either. That’s what they’ve been working on, those snakes.” His eyes unfocused for a moment, then snapped back to Donald. “You know what Nobel invented?”

The question came from nowhere. Donald tilted his head in confusion.

“You know, the peace prize guy.”

“Um, dynamite?” Donald wondered where this was going, if the Senator had been cooped up too long.

“TNT, right. You ever think that’s funny, the man behind a prize for peace coming up with something so destructive?”

“I think it’s because it saved so many lives, sir. At first. Weren’t they using something worse for a while?”

“That’s right. I forget how sharp you are. Nitroglycerine. One shake and off with your arm.”

Donald decided Thurman must be on some kind of sedative for the procedure. The old man was rambling.

“You see, you can’t make something for good without someone else figuring out all the bad it can do.”

“Yessir.”

Senator Thurman released the invisible pinch and studied the pad of his thumb for a moment. He blew a puff of air across it. “Anything these puppies can stitch, they can unstitch.”

He peered across the pod at Donald. “You know why we went into Iran the first time? It wasn’t about nukes, I’ll tell you that. I crawled through every hole that’s ever been dug in those dunes over there, and those rats had a bigger prize they were chasing than nukes. You see, they’ve figured out how to attack us without being seen, without having to blow themselves up, and with zero repercussions.”

Donald was pretty sure he didn’t have the clearance to hear any of this.