July 2031
Delivery Day
18:00
Evenings after work are meant for sustenance and exercise. My muscles are still pretty atrophied and my bone density is still very low. They said this would happen, but if I did the exercises and took the pills everything would get fixed eventually. So everyday when I'm done working I go home, connect my mobile to my big screen, and watch the little video of the genetic freaks who tell me how to move. They make it look so easy with their corp of back up exercisers all moving in perfect synchronization as they jump and lunge and push up and pull down and "Hey Carrie do you feel that burn," "Yeah Carl, I sure do" I hate their smug little too many perfect teeth smiling faces.
I can not push up. And I can not pull down. I am lucky that I have the strength to open the bottles and bottles of pills I have to swallow.
After my food and exercise I go for walks, and then get beers.
Tonight’s beers will be especially intoxicating. Delivery Day is the best day. There will live broadcasts, celebutaunts, parties, and parties and parties. I might even get a pity touch.
So…
I died once.
Of course I didn't know it at the time. In fact, I didn't know for several years that I had died while in cryo during the long trip between Earth and Earth: The Sequel. Nearly everyone who takes the trip dies. It was a secret for a long time. Everyone died, and then the doctors reanimated the undamaged tissue using optogenetics and a cocktail of preservatives and stimulants. To the best of my knowledge no manner of dark magic was involved.
Existing as an undiagnosed reanimated corpse does strange things to a person. But alcohol helps.
I am free now. I am free of all that baggage I carried for so long. I am free from the prescriptions; from the alcohol; free from theism; free from all dependencies and the multitude of parasitic fears they host.
I am a Luddite now. I scratch out a primal existence, and I am the happiest I have ever been.
This is the tale of my rebirth:
The city where I lived, Herrad, was the largest on the colony. It was miles and miles of cold concrete sprawl filled with what was referred to as a "Mixed" population. Herrad was one of the few cities where people born on the colony world of Earth: The Sequel cohabited with imports like myself. It was obvious at a glance who was native and who was imported; the imports all looked like wandering cadavers. Most of us never slept. The lucky ones barely slept.
No wonder the natives took to calling us Zombies. A term, I should add, that I always thought to be unnecessarily pejorative.
The city was mixed, but the neighborhoods were segregated for the most part, although; there were many native owned and operated businesses in the import neighborhoods. Imports lived in the run down but not-quite-ghetto parts of town, and any time; day or night, there might about a bazillion of us walking the extra wide sidewalks -- imports shambling against the current of natives briskly pushing forward with their lives, bums shat on the sidewalks, and the newly in love couples clinging like winter static. The nighttime streets themselves often became playgrounds for juggling bike riding pantomimes or heretics screaming anathema.
Everyone owned a government issued car, but almost no one bothered to drive those far and away from everything streets. The government cars were centuries old designs that ran like shit. All of the cars on this planet were shit. Not as shitty as mine, mind you, but there were no luxury sedans seated around V12 power plants that ignited rubber as they squeeled off into the distance. We were a whole city of econo-box shitsters that whimpered and begged to be put to death. We were not citizens of a great intergalactic empire treading fearlessly forward into the unknown on the back of our technological advances; we were Cubans duct taping dogs to our 50 year old Chevy's because there was no way to get new parts.
I ate my dinner and downed a few handfuls of pills as fast as possible. Long before then I had stopped paying attention to which pills I took in which quantity. It didn’t matter. I would swallow the pills until my belly swelled with fast acting gel coated ph sensitive sustained released capsules and tablets and fuck I think I even stopped popping them out of the plastic bubbles at some point.
I seldom did my exercises in my apartment, because there was a street preacher a few blocks away who always led his congregation in a pretty thorough Peaceful Dragon session. His Kung-Fu wasn’t that strong, but doing the warm up with so many other people added meaning to it somehow… It brought a sense of unity that was really fortified by the sermon that followed.
I was super excited that night. It was going to be a great night for the Peaceful Dragon, and the climax of the evening would be to get shitfaced and watch the Delivery Day transports burn a violent orange as they streaked in through the atmosphere at dusk. The Sol was already setting. Brilliant oranges, yellows, and reds gave the whole city a pleasant apocalyptic look. The look was augmented by the warm breeze and the pervasive feeling of community that can wash over a neighborhood during a time when all hostilities are cast asunder for the sake of jubilee. It would have been a great night to be alive.
Normally, as the night wore on there would be fewer natives with each passing minute, and more imports. We didn't sleep. The night was ours. Because it was Delivery Day, though, that night would have been especially dense with both natives and imports. Delivery Day was of the highest import for everyone on the planet. It was the annual arrival of the main convoy from Earth that brought the bulk of the supplies our planet needed but hadn’t established the production capacity necessary to be self-sustaining.
I stepped over a fresh pile of bum shit, and crossed the street to avoid a few homeless natives who looked to be up to trouble. At the end of the block I could see the preacher, Hyatt, standing on a well worn milk crate and wailing away into the dusk about the wrong's of man against god, and how our sinful chickens would soon come home to roost. This was his nightly call to his congregation. The frat boy next to him wore a sandwich sign with an arrow pointing to the preacher and the words "I'm with Stupid" painted in big day-glo orange blocks. Occasionally, some jokester would intrude on one of Hyatt’s services. It was always amusing.
I had known Hyatt for years. He was a good man who gave daily sermons on his street corner that praised the truth of our deity, Ki Luk Po. He never asked for donations. He was never vengeful, spiteful, spoke ill of natives, or let the politics of the time mire his faith. He treated every member of his congregation as if they were his real flesh and blood family, and he was devoted completely to spreading the glory and the unity that could be found through Ki Luk Po's word.
I mixed in among the crowd to listen to him speak. I knew that he would be undaunted by the malicious native that stood next to him, and I was proven correct. Hyatt popped open his beer, held it out so that the foam wouldn't spray him, and then offered the first drink to the native with the sandwich board sign. The frat boy looked shocked for a second, but he didn't refuse. He took a drink and handed the aluminum can back to Hyatt.
Hyatt took a long draw from his beer. He studied the crowd gathering together before him. "Before we begin our calisthenics this evening I would like to thank my young friend here," he said and pointed to the frat boy. There were boos and groans from the crowd. They were not impressed with the young man's humor. "Now. Now.” Hyatt quieted the rabble. “This is not how we treat a guest in our home. This is not the way of Master Po, is it?"
The crowd; fickle, but compliant.
"A guest in our home receives the best of what we have to offer. The best food, the best drink....
"Our best manners." Hyatt scanned the crowd with a knowing finger, before he turned to the frat boy. "My young friend your sign is unnecessary here. This area has been designated a free speech zone by the Herradic Counsel. We are all free to speak here." The frat boy had the shocked look of someone getting a hug when they expected a slap. "There’s no need for subterfuge. What is in your heart should be on your lips, boy." Hyatt was fond of that particular phrase.
The frat boy stuttered a few broken words before Hyatt cut him off. "Your throat must be raw. Here have another drink."
After another drink the boy barked out a few rough regurgitated lines he had probably learned at his university… something about gods being lies and there only being truth in science... I forget. It was dumb.
In any case I didn't stick around. Watching that frat boy drink beer worked up my thirst something powerful so I decided to skip the Peaceful Dragon and go to the bar for a few beers.
Another block down I reached my destination, The Mountain Air. It was a small dark bar that served passable food and cold-enough beer. It was hard to find a decent beer in Herrad in those days. The grains that grew there just didn't seem to taste right, and so the flavors just weren't the same. I don't know; they were muted, bland, or something. Or maybe it just seemed that way because I was dead. Of course the natives; those who were born on that shit planet and spent their whole lives living in Herrad never knew any better. Shipments of beer from Earth were unheard of.
I had gathered a small group of friends in the years since I'd arrived in Herrad, and most nights several of us could be found sitting in The Mountain Air drinking beers. None of them were people I worked with, fortunately. The people at work were all natives - boring lifeless slaves to this shit culture they had created. My friends were imports like me; transplants from Earth. We didn’t talk about our past lives much. We all knew that none of us came here because we wanted to be here. We all left someplace else, and it was the leaving that was important; not the arriving.
We worked our shitty jobs that we hated during the day. And every evening we went to this bar, the Mountain Air, to get our drink on.
Fun Fact: Zombies love to get shit-faced.
Going somewhere and being social was an important part of the routine the doctors with crossword smiles were always prattling on about. Gotta get out. Gotta meet people and share your troubles so you realize you’re not alone. Though, we didn't talk much, really. We mostly just drank. Sure, we'd bitch a little about whatever was bothering us, and maybe exchange a few ribald jokes. But it was really just about not being alone. Nobody wants to be alone. Not even zombies who are strung out on prescription medication and long sleepless nights.
The Mountain Air was dark and had round tables and mirrored walls so that the one light in the room reflected everywhere. It must save money on electric. I ordered my watery beer from the grizzly guy working the bar that night and carried my sweating red plastic cup over to our usual table; because what's the point of going to a bar if you don't have a usual table?
I guessed that I wouldn't be long waiting. The twins, Danny and Joe, worked together and always showed up at the exact same time because they worked in the same building. They were lucky that way. Most business wouldn't let two imports work together. We were usually sentenced to doing menial tasks suited to dilapidated cognitive skills, but Danny and Joe had come through the cryo and rehab without the usual high level degradation. As a result they were also the only two imports I'd met who actually slept; even if it was only 4 or 5 hours per week. It was still sleep. And dreams. They would describe to us the most vivid of dreams...
Dreams may not sound like much. And I guess they aren’t until you stop having them. The irony of course is that when I did dream, I always wished that I didn't. But that's because I always dreamed of Anna. And dreaming of her just became too hard. It became too much. I lost myself in those dreams of her and forgot what it meant to be human and to interact with other women because I thought that I didn't need them.
I didn't need them. I had the dreams.
Those glorious dreams. Those aching dreams. Those dreams that clung to me like honey as I moved about my mornings in quiet despair aching for the past that in hindsight seemed to be illuminated perfection on even the cloudiest of days.
As I was getting comfortable with my daydream musing the door of the Mountain Air opened and the incoming patron paused in the shadow of border between inside and out. It was fucking sterling grade-A cinema. And that’s when it happened; that’s when the transport convoy exploded. The Delivery Day convoy exploded just as it entered the atmosphere and sent a shower of food, medicine, spare parts, letters, home videos, personnel, and loved ones over a 20,000 mile radius.
All of it, gone.
Every generation has a few of those days where something big happens. The kind of big that gets talked about for decades, and every conversation begins with, “Where were you when it happened?”
I was sitting in the Mountain Air at a table by myself staring at an open door.
Most people like to trace back to that day and say it was the worst thing that ever happened to our colony. Those people are idiots.
I believe it was the best possible thing that could have happened, and that it happened at the best possible moment.
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