Utopia

Chapter Twenty-Three - All and then Most of You

Lys retires. She's not happy about it, but she's ninety and it's time.

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The absence of warmth felt less like something missing and more like the passing of one climate to another. Stepping into the AC on a hot summer afternoon, the heat on a cold winter morning: it was the perpetual adjustment, the warming of the ears, the cooling of the cheeks. Having lived so long without temperature, Kira could no longer appreciate the extremes.

Heat seemed to crawl beneath her skin and twist her from the inside out. She bloated beneath the sun like a balloon held over the fire until it burst.

And still the cold was worse. It never went away.

Beneath the covers, beneath her sweater and the long sleeves, she unkindly thought: this was the way it all was. The universe itself was dark and cold, and only the suns stopped it. But she had read all the literature in the future. The suns too would grow dark and cold, and one day even they would stop forming.

It would always come back to dark and cold. The suctorial void, the universe itself, was uniquely adapted against the life it supported. They needed warmth, light, a drawing together instead of tearing. The universe was not made to support life.

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Lys leaves a pot on the stove so long that the contents burn and the alarms go off. She's very apologetic, pressing her hand over her heart because it startled her.

Still, Kira is the one to take it from the stove. Kira's the one to switch off the lights in the house at the end of the day. Kira's the one who collects all the cups and plates from the different rooms and puts them by the sink.

Because she doesn't understand, she thinks it's funny at first. It's so unlike the inventor that Lys is nearly indignant at the suggestion, until Kira reminds her that she hardly has need for dishes. Until the pot burns on the stove.

The change is subtle, but Kira notices. She stops cooking.

Talya comes for a visit. Lys doesn't know that Kira asked her to.

She needs someone else to notice. Perhaps she thinks, if it can be noticed, it can be stopped.

The visit is nice, but shorter than she wants it to be. Talya is hardly a subtle woman, and when Lys loses her train of thought, the thread of conversation, even briefly, too many times, she tells her aunt, in no uncertain terms, that she will be visiting a doctor.

Lys levels them with a hard stare, speaks with a hard voice, and it's somehow even worse than the forgetting. "Oh will you two put it to rest? I'm fine. I'm just old."

"Exactly," Talya says, "you're old, and it's starting to catch up with you. Problems are just going to start and keep coming, whether you acknowledge them or not. A doctor can help. Lollygagging here won't."

She huffed. "No. I'm sorry, but no. If it's my time, then it's my time, but I won't live half dead in a hospital surrounded by strangers."

Talya looks unimpressed. "Or you could get treatment and live another ten years in your own home."

Mulishness passes between them, and something that Kira won't name. Their niece responds by parting.

Lys turns to Kira with that hardness. "Give it a rest, alright?"

Kira says, "No."

~/~

Susannah had given up on knocking, which was fine because Kira had given up on a lot of things. She was on the floor again. It was harder to fall off of.