Parasite║LGBT+║ONC SHORTLIST 2024

1: Hunger

 05:35, Firstsol 12th M5, 2226

To be alive is to be hungry.

Not the passing hunger pangs of a miner clocking off work, safe in the knowledge that dinner will bring satiety. No, my hunger is different.

It gnaws at my bones. It dulls my senses and makes my mind knot like an eel. Hunger bends and twists me, luring me into depravity. I haven't fed for four sols and my very soul is unravelling.

The city's air filters are faulty again. Droplets of salty drizzle bead on my jacket as I cross the market district. Careful to retreat into the shadows whenever a warden passes, I snake through the market's humid back alleys, past dumpling vends and makeshift shops constructed of sagging tarp and boxes.

Every sol I intend to tread the same tired circuit from my pod to the hospital, and back again. Every sol my feet turn unbidden on a minor detour past the Kida Biotech building. Its curves loom over the squat grey recycrete buildings of Eris-1, taking up an entire eighth of the city's dome. So exquisite that it disgusts me, the building looks like it's been freshly plucked from Earth and dropped at the Solar System's Edge by Shiva's own celestial hand. Three storeys of curved brick, mortar and glass shine under the dome's luminaires, an exotic gem glittering in the city's mire of recycrete and steel.

Each step closer to the building's shadow has sweat pooling on my lip and soaking through my uniform. I've approached the Kida Biotech building daily, but I've never held my nerve for long enough to make it through those glass doors. Through rain-streaked windows I can make out clusters of svelte Kida employees in azalea-pink suits with cinched waistlines; busy workers in a hive. Occasionally one of them peels off from the throng and scurries through the foyer, disappearing into corridors beyond a glass atrium.

Proximity to the red bricks triggers my lenses. The Kida Biotechnology logo appears on my retinas in 4096-pixel brilliance. Megumi Kida's smiling face follows, and I scramble to mute my earpiece. A willowy beauty in her thirties, Megumi Kida tilts her head and mouths her broadcast, all furrowed brow and earnest smile. I don't need to hear her voice to recognise one of her public health statements, the same as her father's before he retired, reminding Eris residents to stay warm to keep our metabolic brain implants — our meatware — in optimal condition.

As if the domes of Eris-1 are ever anything but warm, the temperature at a perpetual twenty degrees with precisely twelve hours of artificial sunlight each sol. As a child I'd wondered how the people of Earth tolerated seasonal changes in light and heat, but twenty-five years of hunger on Eris has me craving sun, monsoons, and indeed any distraction from constant hunger. Megumi's pretty face disappears from my retinas in a wash of flickering pixels, and my lenses fall to rest again.

The iris scanner on the building's glass door glows red as I approach. I should have discussed my metabolic condition with Kida's scientists years earlier. Perhaps they'd find a way to fix my meatware; they'd cure my perpetual hunger, and this tired daily ritual of approaching and fleeing the red brick entrance would be over. It's doubtful that there's anybody like me in the Solar System. Megumi Kida herself might take an academic interest in my condition and want to meet me. Perhaps she'd introduce me to her father as a bionic curiosity.

I crush the reverie before it can carry me away. The more likely scenario, and one that plagues me constantly, is that Kida's biotechnologists will ask questions about what I eat. Questions that they won't want to hear the answers to. Then they'll report me to the wardens, and Holy Shiva knows what they'd do to me. The thought has my head swirling in hot panic. I run from the red bricks. The iris scanner dims in my peripheral vision as I flee.

My flight takes me through spindly alleyways that spider-web outwards from the market under the immense geodesic dome of Eris-1's central district, far from the busier bars and shops usually patrolled by wardens. Adrenaline abates once I'm safe in the darker alleyways of the market. My skin crawls with hunger. Perhaps it's time to move to another city, but first, I need to feed.