The Future We Wish We Had

By the time I completed the triumphant celebration at the end my ears rang and sweat dripped from every pore of my body. My heart beat too rapidly.

“Now you know,” I told the nanobots, “why humanity craves art. Existence is chaos, conflict, and fear. Art is the flower bud of beauty that allows us to step back from the horrors of life so we can find the hope and joy in living.”

I exulted in finally being close to what I was meant to be. Only one more step remained in my recovery.

Inside me, the nanos wept with awe.

We have spent some time working on your pelvic muscles, the nanos informed me as I entered the dressing room of a private studio in London.

“What’s wrong with my pelvis?” I sank onto one of the benches and began digging leg warmers and pointe shoes out of my bag.

I was due to open at the Royal Albert Hall in just two weeks. I needed to get into rehearsals in the next day or two at the latest. But I didn’t want anyone to see my first venture onto pointe. Certainly the nanos would protest. The argument might take several hours. But I knew how to convince them.

A lifetime of carrying your bags and books and things on the same hip. Then an imbalance in your posture-you tighten your butt but neglect your abs. You had pushed the joints out of alignment. We have corrected that and stimulated the muscles so that they hold.

“Oh. A lifetime of bad habits. Thank you for correcting it. I’ll work on eliminating those bad habits.” I loved this new relationship with my nanos. I’d found that I could finally indulge my appetite without gaining weight. The nanos put every calorie to good use. They’d added firmness to my breasts, eliminating the beginnings of sag. My skin felt fresher and more elastic all over my body.

I arched my feet within the pointe shoes and tied the ribbons securely.

A strange, numbing silence took over the back of my neck.

I slipped from the dressing room into the studio and took my position at the barre. No time to waste putting music in the CD player in the corner. I had to do this before the nanos became suspicious and closed me down. I’d just have to hum along to my warmup routine.

The silence in my head spread through my shoulders and arms as I dipped into my first round of plies.

Biting my lip, for concentration, I rose out of the bend and continued stretching up and up until my feet rolled to a full point within the special shoes.

Fire laced through all of the delicate bones and muscles from toe to knee and upward.

NO! You can’t do this.

“I will do this. The dance is not complete without pointe shoes. The lines of my body are asymmetrical unless I continue the line of my feet into a full point.” I dropped down to flat. The fire went away.

I tried again.

The pain increased and rose up to my hips and into my heart and lungs.

Gasping for breath, I bent double.

The moment my heels touched the ground the pain reduced to a burning ache. Air rushed back into my lungs.

“Let’s try something else.” I marched over to the portable CD player in the corner and shoved in a disc. By the time I returned to the barre, the nanos had begun to hum along.

Hoping I’d lulled them into submission, I tried again.

They reacted more violently. I collapsed onto the floor, straining to breathe through the pain.

We cannot allow you to damage yourself beyond our ability to repair you.

“Then get busy and replicate a bunch more of you. I will do this. The dance is not complete unless I go on pointe. My career is finished if I can’t dance on pointe. Without my career, I am nothing.”

Silence.

When I could bear to stand up again, I tried one more time to rise up on pointe.

This time the nanos reduced me to puddle of pain and tears. I had to crawl back to the dressing room.

Inside the studio the music continued its lonesome routine, playing for the dance without a dancer.

Alone in the dead of night, I sat on the bed of my furnished flat and stared at the bottle of pain pills Dr. Bertrand had given me. Sixty of the big green caplets with the unpronounceable name. Heavy-duty medication, barely legal in the U.S., and certainly not in the dosage and numbers in that bottle. Enough to last me an entire month if I took the prescribed amount of one with breakfast and another when I went to bed.

Was it enough?

I arched my feet one more time.

No reaction from the nanos.

I stood up and stretched into a long arabesque.

Still no reaction.

I reached for my pointe shoes.

The nanos collapsed every muscle in my body.

Crying for all my lost hopes and dreams, crying for the end of my art and dance, crying for the end of me, I crawled back onto the bed.

The bottle of pills still stood on the nightstand. A big glass of water sat beside it.

Choking on my tears I shook six pills into my hand and reached for the water.

What are you doing? the nanos asked in alarm.

“The only thing I can do. You won’t let me dance. Without my art my life is reduced to mere existence. There is no hope, no joy, no beauty.”

You may dance; just not with those torture devices.

“That is the only way I can perform ballet. The dance is not complete without an audience.”

Then invent a new form of dance, a less destructive form that does not require turnout or pointe shoes.

“They call that modern dance. I find it ugly.”

I swallowed one pill.

It went down sideways and stuck in my throat. I gagged and drank more water until it cleared.

Damn. Now I’d have to get more water to take the rest of the pills.

One is enough.

“No, it isn’t. Not to end the pain in here.” I slammed my fist onto my heart. A new spate of tears blurred my vision as I refilled the glass of water.

You will damage yourself. We cannot allow that.

“You have damaged my identity, my very soul to the point of no return.” I tried to put another pill into my mouth and found my hand shaking so badly I dropped them all.

Cursing, I crawled around on the floor seeking them out.

You will end your existence if you take all those pills.

“And your point would be?” I found four. That should do the job. And there were others in the bottle. If my hands stopped shaking long enough to open the childproof cap.

You cannot mean to end your existence! they cried in alarm.

“I mean precisely to do that.” I managed to get a second pill into my mouth.

But, but…

I’d never known the nanos to sputter.

It didn’t matter any longer. I had to do this. I grasped the glass of water firmly.

“Without the dance, I am nothing. All the pain, and agony, cutting myself off from friends, denying myself the pleasure of a movie, or an art museum, or a loving relationship… I endured all of that because it interfered with my dancing. Now I have nothing. I am nothing.”

If you kill yourself, then we will die, too.

“So? What good are you if you won’t let me dance?” I got the glass as far as my mouth.

Then my hand clenched so tightly the glass shattered. Water sprayed all over me. The precious pill dropped to the floor once more.

Blood ran down my hand and dripped on the floor from half-a-dozen glass cuts.

“Now look what you made me do.”

We cannot allow you to terminate yourself or us.

“I’ll find a way.” I picked up one of the larger pieces of glass. Big enough and sharp enough. I aimed it over the big artery in my wrist. I remembered reading somewhere that those who were more serious about their suicide slashed lengthwise, along the artery. Cutting crosswise was only a gesture by those who cried for help.

I watched my blood pulse in my wrist and poised it to slash lengthwise.

Is destroying your body with pointe shoes more important than living?

“Dancing on pointe is an essential part of the dance… of living.” I brought the glass shard closer to my wrist, bracing myself against the pain I knew would come. The final pain I must endure.

If we let you dance on pointe will you continue to live?

“Dancing on pointe is life to me. Without the pointe shoes I cannot perform; I cannot complete the art of dance without an audience.”

A huge sigh of resignation ran through my body.

Clean up the broken glass, then sleep. We must replicate ourselves one hundred times over to accommodate your art. For the stake of beauty.

Crying in relief I obeyed and flushed the last of the pills down the toilet. The nanos had given me another chance to live.