Them

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The first time I met them was in middle school. They walked up to me, step by deliberate step as I hung in the boy’s restroom, our eyes meeting somewhere far away. They stopped; I felt a whisper of their outstretched hand caressing my cheek.

There was a profound sadness in their eyes, a longing for a time long past. A deep pity for the broken husk that hung before them. That sadness carried a profound weight to it. Had I made a mistake? I managed to crack my mouth open to ask. Nothing came out.

My vision began to ebb. Frame by frame, their had moved to close my eyelids. One last echo of desperation cried out of the depths of my chest begging for a single word, a smile, a tear, yet nothing made it out. I liked to believe that they knew how thankful I was; I was always terrified that I’d die alone. And as my conciousness receeded perhaps for the last time, I burned their face into my mind: my last and only friend. Then with a loud “crack!” I came crashing back to reality.

When I woke up, the doctor told me there was nobody else in that restroom. My mind reeled as she chided me about how bad the school would have looked if their suicide count had hit 50 that year. I wasn’t listening; I was already keenly aware of the statistics. Thanks dad.

Instead, as it would be for the rest of my life, my mind was firmly locked on Them. They were real. I was certain of it. Nobody I asked seemed to recognize them. I must have hacked into the school’s various data systems at least a dozen times, all to no avail. The mystery person simply didn’t exist. Ironically, my search for them kept me going for another couple of years, but like a moth to a flame, they found their way back to me.

I’m an engineer. I’m a programmer. I’ve worked with cyberware as far back as I can remember. The week before, I had just figured out how to modify my ears to only hear certain frequencies of sound. I was damn good at what I did. What I do.

However, one thing I am not is a chemist. Perhaps I should have tested my creations on a mouse or something first, but I was desperate. So, it took me a moment to process things when I saw a ghost of their figure in the bloody mirror fragments.

I gasped and moved to sit up, giving a little lurch instead, making a little “plish” as I landed back into my growing pool of blood and tears. My arms simply refused to do as I told them, keeping me strictly anchored to the ground. The slits in my wrists that were supposed to free me choosing to instead root me in my awful body.

I gave a slight chuckle, glancing around at my failed experiment. I was damn foolish to believe that some half corrupted old webpage that I had dug up from the old net would adequately instruct me on the nuances of hormone structure. I glanced a reflection of myself on the volumetric flask containing the concentrated essence of failure. The damn thing kept following me around. My vision flashed red in sheer self hatred. I wanted it gone, my failure, the flask, but most of all that awful, evil face that looked back at me. My hands of course did nothing, so I opted instead to writhe in desperation.

A soft “splash” of a boot making contact with my pool of misery put my useless movements to a stop. They were back.

“Destroy it all” I felt my hoarse voice say. They finally came into view, kneeling by my side, that look of melancholy still present on their face as I had remembered it all those years ago. They placed a hand on my shoulder, grabbing and shaking it slightly. Their eyebrows were pressed together in a look of concern. A plea of some sort. I couldn’t parse it. Decyphering things had gotten rather difficult from all the blood loss, and i had gotten rather exhausted from all the movement.

“hmmm?” I asked drowsily as they sat me up wrapping their arm under mine. “Wherarewegoing?” I mumbled as they stood me up and began to move toawrds the balcony. They creaked the door open and moved us outside, setting me down with my back propped up against the wall. They sat down next to me gazing out over the vast cityscape, the city staring back at us beautiful, haunting, and uncaring as ever.

I hated the city. It ground people up and fed them to its proverbial wood chipper just to squeeze out a couple extra dollars in corpo market cap. But somehow its regular cursed glow had abated at the mere sight of Them, resulting in a beautiful view I had never quite seen before.

I shfted my weight as best I could, manging a semi-controlled slump onto them, my head resting on their shoulder. They placed an arm around me. A tear rolled down my cheek; I hadn’t been this close to another person in my life. Fitting, perhaps, that it would occur in death.

“Thanks,” I whispered. They gave me a little squeeze in response. We gazed out over the endless city till I lost conciousness. How long that was, I couldn’t tell you. When I woke up, they were gone, and my wounds had miraculously scabbed over. After dressing my injuries, I laid back in my chair, pensively surveying the blood pool, the shattered mirror, and (against my best efforts), my still intact experiment.

One more try.

After I graduated high school, I had been taking side gigs netrunning for cyberwatch’s intelligence wing just to keep the food coming while I searched for Them. They had become an obsession of mine, which was probably a good thing. You can’t survive in the modern day without something keeping you going; Some have lofty ideals, some have hard drugs, i just had Them.

My experiments had eventually succeeded which certaintly didnt hurt either. I liked to think that plea that they had given me was one of encouragement; a vote of confidence. Every failure, every setback brought their face into my head, making giving up impossible.

I had been evicted from my cargo crate the week earlier; Just one of the 120,995 that would be evicted in such a way this year. As a result, I had deemed that cyberwatch gig necessary. I needed the scratch to afford a roof over my head. There’s a reason everyone tells you to avoid gig work for corps (12,492 “work related” deaths this year), but I was young and thought I could get away with it. All I know is that one moment I was under, and the next I was wrenched back into my body, looking directly into their eyes again as they lay next to me. How I had missed those eyes. Hello again they seemed to say, regretfully. The sting of the dozen or so holes in my torso was reduced to little more than a subtle tone that echoed across my body. Like the dial tone on my dad’s old rotary phone he bought after the old net collapsed. I managed little more than a weak cough and a “Who?” carried over the whisper of whatever air happened to remain in my tattered lungs. I think I already knew, subconsciously, but the little smile they gave me all but confirmed it.

Death.

How anyone could fear such a beautiful and delicate creature was beyond me. I inched my hand towards theirs and they took it tenderly. I smiled, the muted tone echoing through my body subsiding to a fuzzy static. I didn’t care. Bleeding out in an abandoned building, like that night on the balcony, I was alright again. Content to spend the short remainder of my life laying there motionless, holding hands with them.

The immediate pity in their eyes was obvious but behind that I could clearly identify a heavier sadness, grounded in an ocean of exhaustion. How long had they been alive? What had they seen? Experienced? Felt? Fuck, now I was the one pitying them. Had they had a single break? Or were they forced to witness statistic after statistic? And why me? I knew these numbers like the back of my hand: there were at least twenty other people in that city dying at that very instant. Why spend precious time lying in the dirt with some fucking idiot? Whatever the reason, I slowly mouthed a word of thanks at them. They squeezed my hand, which for some reason brought tears to my eyes.

A million miles away, a noise played. Almost a recording of a glass vase falling, shattering, played back as quietly as speakers would allow. Then voices. Annoying voices. Like the voices that played on dad’s post-old net radio. Dad. I think i forgave him a bit in that moment. He must have met Death as well. He must have known them like I did. Why else would you kill yourself with a 13 year old kid to take care of? Especially with a motto like “Don’t add to the statistics.”

I felt my body lurch. Odd. I certainly didn’t have the strength for such things. A pinch on my arm echoed across my hollow consciousness, followed quickly by a burning sensation that rapidly replaced the comfortable radio fuzz. The lurch happened again. Wait, I was moving. Death! Where were they? We couldn’t be separated again. I wouldn’t allow it. Ignoring the fire in my veins and the screaming voices in my head I lurched up, writhing back and forth. Loud shouting ensued. I spotted them back on the ground where we laid seconds before, sitting up, looking at me with a hopeful smile. I felt another pinch as we locked eyes. They mouthed a silent “go”, and the world melted away.

I awoke pissed in a hospital bed. Someone was going to pay.

“Your rescue wasn’t cheap, kid” a voice stated behind me. I turned, conealing my seething anger. A woman in a dark black suit, seated at my beadside studied me with a jaded look. Fucking corpo.

I knew the deal:

“What do you want.”

“Information. What you were doing for cyberwatch, what you got, contacts, names, the lot.”

“Done. I have full logs and stats on my cyberdeck.” She smiled. She must have been desperate, going after a contract worker like me; corps always keep us at an arm’s length to protect against this kind of stuff. She rifled through a bag, pulling out my cyberdeck. She handed it to me along with a chip.

“Address and instructions are on here.” I nodded, taking it and typing in my passkey. A screech leapt out of the device, high pitched and unbelievably loud. Her hands involuntarily leapt to her ears as the monotone sound poured out of the device. Those modifications I had made in high school had paid off; I was unaffected. She was not so lucky, doubling over in pain.

I inputted a few keystrokes, and was met with my usual list of options. I disdainfully picked the quickest, affording her a short glance of pity, and shut off the audio. She removed her hands from her ears, glaring at me.

“You little…” A loud electrical pop emitted from her head, and the left side of her face went slack. Poor bastard, one of 83 this year. I slowly eased my way out of the bed, as she fell to her knees behind me, a slurry of biomechanical sludge beginning to drip from her nose. I took a few weak steps towards the window as a dull thump signaled the end of her short journey to the floor. I took an apprehensive sigh as I inputted a couple more keystrokes into my device, opening the window to the outside.

“I’m coming back, honey,” I mutter as I gaze out over the city once again. It really just doesn’t look the same without them. I give it one last little smile as I finally contribute my tick mark to the statistics.