Will McIntosh - Love Minus Eighty

Rob opened his mouth to reply, then noticed the time. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” The dread in her tone told Rob she knew what. “How much longer?”

“Thirty seconds.”

She laughed with a panicked urgency. “I just tried to nod. I can’t feel my body, but I keep reaching for it, you know?”

Rob nodded, feeling guilty that he was able to.

“How about this? I’ll just tell you when I’m nodding, or shaking my head, or punching you.”

“Oh, no,” Rob laughed, “are you planning on punching me often?”

“We’ll see.”

Rob couldn’t help glancing at the timer, though he knew it would only make Winter more aware of what was about to happen. Seven seconds.

“I keep expecting this to get easier, that it will start to feel as if I’m going to sleep. But it doesn’t. Maybe it’s not possible to get used to dying.”

Rob reached out to comfort her, then remembered it was forbidden and drew back. If not for the surveillance, Rob would have reached under the silver cover and taken her hand, cold and stiff as it would have been.

As she stood on the bottom step outside her apartment building, waiting for an opening in the flow of human traffic gliding by at morning rush hour, Veronika felt simultaneously exhausted and energized. It was the three-month anniversary of the Red Letter Day, as she thought of it, and still, that flurry of events occupied most of her waking thoughts. The man on the bridge, her semi-reconciliation with Jilly, her intimate playacting with Nathan, Rob’s struggle for redemption. She had spent her days cycling from pain to longing to joy to curiosity, riding a merry-go-round of emotion.

She stepped onto the sidewalk, quickly got up to speed with the other pedestrians, a cool morning breeze blowing her hair, which was unsatisfactorily frizzy this morning. She was only half watching the sidewalk, her attention focused for the moment on Nathan. Those hours spent pretending to be his girlfriend had been some of the best of her life. The problem was, now she was back to her normal life. It felt so dreary by comparison. Until now, she’d only been able to fantasize about what it would be like if she and Nathan were together. Now she knew exactly how his strong arm felt wrapped around her waist, saw how people looked at her when they thought Nathan was her boyfriend.

Rationally, she knew this crush on Nathan was absurd. But love wasn’t rational, and there didn’t appear to be any way for her to stop feeling what she felt, or even to tone it down so that it wasn’t so all-consuming. Dwelling on his many flaws—his narcissism being front and center on that list—did nothing to cool her ardor.

Up ahead, a man was standing motionless in the middle of the sidewalk, clogging traffic, forcing people to push past on either side of him. He was a black man, tall and huge. He was glaring at Veronika with lunatic rage.

Although she knew it couldn’t be the man who’d jumped off the bridge, she was certain it was him.

Veronika jolted to a stop, her momentum almost causing her to tumble forward. Heart pounding, she ran a facial match with the recording from the bridge her system had made, sure she must be mistaken.

The match was confirmed. It was him.

The man stepped toward her. He seemed livid, though uneasy with his rage, unsure whether to clench his fists and grit his teeth or leave his hands and mouth open.

“So here I am, alive. Are you happy?”

“Hey, come on,” a passerby growled after bumping into the man.

People passed on either side, brushing against Veronika’s coat. “I don’t understand. You didn’t survive the fall, did you? You couldn’t have.”

The man made a guttural sound of disgust, squeezed his eyes closed, as if the sight of Veronika was just too much for him. He stormed off.

Veronika was relieved to be out from under his angry stare, but couldn’t just let him walk off. She ID’d his fast-retreating form, was surprised to discover he didn’t have a privacy block on his system. His name was Lycan Hill; he worked at a place called Wooster.

Had he survived the jump? Maybe he was wealthy enough to afford complete revivification insurance. If so, why did he kill himself without canceling the insurance first? This was going to torment her.

Veronika took off after him.

“Lycan?” she called when she was right behind him, almost running to keep up with his long, brisk strides.

Lycan turned, again grunted with disgust when he saw it was her.

“Look, I just wanted to help. I didn’t mean to make things worse.”

“All right.” He kept walking.

“Can we talk?”

“What about?”

“I don’t know. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m okay.”

Huffing from exertion, Veronika stopped. “ Will you just please stop walking? ”

Lycan stopped, turned to face Veronika, waiting for her to say something.

“I have to know how you were saved.”

Lycan sighed heavily. “When I canceled my freezing insurance, I neglected to indicate in my will that no one else could revive me.” He shook his head grimly. “Evidently I’m valuable enough to my company that they footed the bill to drag me back.”

Veronika looked around at the flow of pedestrians. “Can we sit somewhere?” She gestured toward a little fenced park jutting over a drop.

Lycan rolled his eyes. “I have to go now.”

“Just for a minute. Please?”

Lycan heaved a sigh, looking defeated. “By all means,” he said with mock enthusiasm. “Maybe we should order tea and cakes.”

Veronika led him to a couple of seats in the park, then wasn’t sure what to say. After what happened on Lemieux Bridge, something should be said. Something. She wasn’t sure what, though.

“What do you do, that you’re so valuable to your employer?” she asked. If Veronika jumped off a bridge, she’d be lucky if L-Dat sprang for flowers.

“What’s the difference?” Lycan said.

Veronika shrugged sharply. “I’m just asking. You know, I didn’t push you off that bridge. Stop acting like I did.”

Lycan relaxed a bit, though his pinched expression suggested he wasn’t conceding her point. “I’m a neuropsychologist. I’m working on a project with some commercial potential.” He grunted softly. “Evidently more commercial potential than I knew. They paid almost thirty million to revive me.” There was a note of pride in his otherwise acid delivery as he stared down through the latticework of the sidewalk at the black rectangles of Low Town roofs, at the frenzy of traffic, the barely discernible moving specks that were people. The braided material that formed the floor of the park was designed to maximize the amount of light that filtered down to Low Town, but it also served to make sitting in the park an ungrounding experience, as if you might fall at any moment.

“I was an expensive fix because when I hit the water, my ribs punctured most of my vital organs.” Lycan’s tone, and the look he gave Veronika, suggested this was somehow her fault. “They missed my heart, however, so it was a much more painful death than I’d anticipated. Almost as painful as the moments leading up to it.”

“I’m sorry. I meant well.”

He watched Low Town for a moment, then looked back at Veronika. “I know I shouldn’t be taking this out on you, but you were so certain that it was your business. You were so concerned that I stay alive. Well, I’m alive. Now what do I do?” There was no anguish on Lycan’s face as there had been on Lemieux Bridge. He seemed not so much despondent as genuinely lost, as if he expected an answer to his question. Which was not good, because Veronika didn’t have one. That life was better than death seemed obvious to her, but that didn’t mean she thought life was particularly awesome.