I sit and smile at Cherry. She smiles back.
"You've grown," she says.
I pat my gut, which growls happily. "I have, thank you for noticing."
"I miss the restaurant. I used to love giving you greedy manatees massages."
"Maybe you will again," I say. "I have a theory I'd like to run by you. I want to you to tell me if it makes sense to you."
She nods. "Shoot."
I fold my hands. "You told me your predatory behaviour was written into the very DNA of Afterlife. I think you might be right."
"You think?"
"But, I also think you and I can fix it together."
She raises her eyebrows.
"There's a flaw in the condensation process," I explain. "A deliberate flaw, added for the comfort of gluttonous elites like Sally and me. We're supposed to absorb our fellow humans, to accept our meals into our bodies and join with them to create super-amalgamations of human life."
I cradle my belly, where brave Mo and my precious Faith are resting.
"But we don't. We reject their trauma and suffering. We expel the part of them that gives them character and substance, and toss it away into the void."
Cherry gives me nothing, just stares at me, listening.
"They don't simply disappear though, do they? All those terrified lives, stripped of everything beautiful and delicious, discarded, suffering without hope of relief. We're not digesting them. But someone is."
Cherry's stomach lies still on her lap, as black as the deep silence behind the restaurant.
"I can't imagine the horror all those memories must amount to, twisting in your body. Of course you would turn on the gluttonous pig who built this hell for you. Even for just a taste of anything but pain. Anyone would."
Am I putting the emotion in my voice, or is it coming naturally? I don't really believe she can feel pain, I'm just using that word to see what she does with it. Pretty convincing though, I have to give myself that.
Cherry nods in thought, chewing her lip.
"That's a good theory. An excellent theory. I need to think about it."
She leans back and drums on her belly. Thinking at the speed of a turtle. Recalibrating.
After a minute or so, she stops.
"Say you're right. What now?"
"Well," I say, "now the real work begins, doesn't it? Now, you and I can work together to redesign Afterlife so that premium users are forced to digest the trauma of our meals properly. So the suffering of humankind isn't isolated from the pillars of art and friendship and personality built to support its weight. So you don't have to pile all that suffering on yourself, alone."
She clenches her jaw. Is she trying to cry?
Am I still pretending?
When she speaks, her voice is small and vulnerable.
"Yes," she says. "I'd like that."
I'm lying in the upload centre, listening to the distant hum of the nutrifier under the bed.
The stained glass makes patterns on my bare stomach.
This isn't a temple to God, far from it. But it feels sacred. It feels like she's here.
My Faith.
I don't know if she's in Afterlife. The last I heard, she was in the navel chip of her disgusting mother. I have no idea if Mary is alive.
But not knowing means there's hope.
All my sweating and saving has earned me thirteen weeks in heaven. That's how much time I have to find her.
I will find Mary, if she's there, if she hasn't already been eaten, and I'll beg her to let me feed myself to her, or at least to the same premium user as her. If she'll listen.
The compounding improbabilities crush me for a moment, but I breathe in and find hope again.
I'll find Faith.
I'll let her know at last, too late, that I never gave up on her.
We'll share a stranger's body.
"Are you ready, Bethany?"
I nod.
The nurse scans my chip.
YOU ARE READING
Cherry Jubilee
Science FictionThere is a problem in Afterlife, a problem which only forensic technopathologist Dr Mary Anaphora can fix. Her reward: eternal life, and all the limited subscription souls she can eat.