Next, Please

by Mo Daniel

Rhonda Kent lay in her hospital bed, freezing to death. Why do they keep these god-damned rooms so frigid, she thought? And where had that stupid nurse gone? Rhonda hadn’t seen her in hours. Probably off smoking a cigarette.

Rhonda desperately needed a smoke herself. She had hustled her first cigarette at thirteen -- the main reason for the lung cancer and why she needed the oxygen tanks. “No Smoking” signs in bright red were displayed above her bed and by the door.

There, it happened again, thought Rhonda looking up. It began with a pale purple halo above her bed. Then, as before, the lights changed to electric blue, and the wall began pulsating to the beat of some enormous, primitive drum. It pounded and pounded, shaking her 85-pound frame. She knew her bones would soon snap like brittle kindling. The blue lights were incredibly bright now, and the room itself seemed to expand and contract with the sound of the drumbeats.

“Nurse!” Rhonda rasped faintly, wondering how she could ever be heard above the awful din. “Get in here! Make it stop!” Rhonda gasped and opened her mouth wide to suck in extra air as she fumbled for the call button. She finally found it and pushed.

After what seemed like an eternity to Rhonda, a trim fiftyish woman dressed in white and wearing white sneakers strolled into the room and stood over Rhonda.

“Are you fussing again, Ms. Rhonda?” The nurse checked the paraphernalia leading into and out of Rhonda’s frail body and scanned the monitors above her head.

“Why, your vitals look about as good as you can expect, Ms. Rhonda,” the nurse said firmly. “You been seeing things again?”

Rhonda lay back on the pillows and breathed in and out slowly before she spoke. The noise and lights receded just as they had before. The nurse, Rhonda now realized, could not see the bright beams of color nor hear the dreadful pounding.

“Get out.” Rhonda said wearily with her eyes closed, nodding at the door.

“Anything you say honey,” the nurse said as she walked toward the door. She stopped. “Things get confusing toward the end –- I know it’s hard. Nobody said it was easy.”

The nurse left but didn’t shut the door, and Rhonda couldn’t get up to close it herself. She couldn’t even raise the one bony arm not festooned with wires and tubes to get a drink. She ached for a drink. Bourbon, neat-- not the damned pitcher of water that tasted like piss.

Rhonda drifted into the past, recalling sounds and aromas from her childhood. The smell of the lake in summer and the sounds of laughter at Mills Beach. Who was that boy in the red shorts? Oh, yeah, Dennis Clayborn. How could she forget Denny’s sweet, first kiss under the Harmon Street railroad bridge? Why did you have to die so young? she thought, remembering that fatal, head-on car crash. He had been blinded by the oncoming headlights driving home from work.

Rhonda continued to wade in memories. Mama! She saw her mother working in the backyard garden filled with the scent of dahlias and honeysuckle. Father called the garden her one constant love. She saw her father, lean and dark in his favorite olive jacket, calling to Rhonda as she climbed the small apple tree in front of the house. Memories of her father are the most precious. She recalls the night he tucked her into bed, tiptoed downstairs to the den, removed a revolver from his desk drawer and . . .

Velgren 621 opens its eyes. Its head aches, and its eyes can’t quite focus. It realizes the session has been interrupted. Something must have gone wrong with the VLE projector as servidroids are working on the console to the right. Bright purple and blue lights blink madly while a droid pounds on a large panel that won’t budge. It’s too late to continue the session with consciousness slowly pouring into its brain like seeping water under a closed door.

Velgren 621 peers about the room. Rhonda’s world now evaporates as reality forces its way back into Velgren’s mind. Others like Velgren 621 remain inert at large, gray consoles attended by dark metal droids. They aren’t asleep, Velgren 621 knows. All are in varying stages of Virtual Living Exercises, a technology invented by a team of sci-droids at Comzak back in the early days of the Immortality Era. The exercises utilize archeological evidence discovered by pioneer droids on a once-living planet in Section Z9 of the galaxy. In fact, the explorers brought back so much new data that it spawned waves of excitement on Terracania when the information was released. In addition to the surge of interest, the data led to a practical new form of entertainment—over 30,000 different patched-together life stories from birth to death that could be experienced by Terracanians in a six-hour session.

Velgren 621 shrugs. It knows that a long time will pass before it sees the inside of the Regional VLE Center again. All Terracanians in Region IX compete for the same 32 slots, and demand far outpaces availability. New VLE centers have been promised for centuries, but there aren’t enough servidroids to build and operate them without raising the droid manufacturing limits. Terracanians are afraid of many things, but a droid revolt is their primary fear.

One of those handy yet feared devices now shows Velgren 621 a blue token that promises VIP status for its next session to compensate for today’s botched one. Velgren 621 makes no sound. It cannot. It has no mouth, no vocal cords. It shrugs once again. The token has no real value. It’s what it says: a token apology, not a useful tool. Velgren 621 thinks about Rhonda Kent. It knows she wouldn’t have accepted this travesty without a fight. Rhonda would have made it clear she wasn’t budging until she’d been given a free session! No Terracanian, however, would ever complain or make a scene.

Velgren 621 looks down at its own body, a grayish gelatinous mass with only stubs of what might be called appendages. Once, its appendages were fully formed and used for grasping, caressing, touching, handling. No one alive now remembers that time, of course. Terracanians use them now to signal simple orders to droids. They communicate with each other very little, but when it is necessary, they use thought transmission. Velgren 621 now uses its appendages to signal a servidroid to fetch its transporter. It just wants to get home and bathe in TRD 10, an electrolyte solution. It is famished, and urges like that are rare on Terracania.

Velgren 621 has no family. Terracanians agree that families are an archaic and unnecessary institution. Yet Velgren 621 has a yearning it can’t explain. It always has unexplainable feelings after a session, but it knows these aches are not authentic, not real. It has been explained that they are only stirrings caused by lifelike visual and audial stimuli. They will soon pass.

Velgren 621 remembers Rhonda as a young woman. Her soft, supple skin and breasts. Her sexual organs that Rhonda and certain others manipulated to cause pleasure. Velgren 621 recalls that pleasure with wonder. It has no such physical organs to give pleasure. Sex has been eliminated from the species just as death no longer holds sway over Terracanians.

Velgren 621 watches as its small transporter rolls to a halt in the wide aisle to its left. Two servidroids finish removing sensors, tubes and wires from the Terracanian’s body.

We have everything we possibly need to survive for eternity, Velgren 621 thinks to itself. Strange. That it could be jealous of such a short existence as Rhonda Kent’s. But it knows that all memories will fade over time if one lives long enough.