C James - Dome Six

She could tell he wanted to spill his guts but turned and led them all inside just as others began to arrive. He seemed more agitated than usual, which was saying something.

The technical name for the building was the Quietus Center but everyone called it the Box. The ceremony was presided over by a midlevel Authority stooge from the Directorate of Health. Attendees sat on aluminum benches and watched an IDA-generated recap of the departing individual’s life. They were then invited to say a few words to the Elder before they were ushered through a thick metal door. Once it closed, no one ever saw them again.

Whatever actually happened inside the Box was a mystery. The popular theory was that an automated system administered an injection. Others believed the oxygen was sucked out of the room or that it was flooded with some sort of deadly gas. No one knew for sure.

Quietus was half the solution to one of the thorniest problems of Dome life: How to maintain a level population in a closed system. It was simple enough to control the birth date but dealing with Elders was another matter. The Originals agreed to a 75-year lifespan, and so it had always been.

Intellectually, Tosh got it. She remembered attending her grandfather Ray’s Quietus at age 22, the spring before she adopted Owen. They weren’t close, but she cared for him. Since she never got the chance to say goodbye to her own parents, it felt like a sort of penance. She sat next to her grandmother and listened while a few dozen people heaped praise and love on her perfectly healthy grandfather. They swapped stories, hugged him goodbye, then watched him go willingly into the Box.

It was nice to say goodbye to someone you loved while they still had their wits about them. At least you knew they wouldn’t suffer or fade into some pale, gaunt version of themselves. That didn’t make any of it seem right.

Art was seated in a chair at the front of the room but got up as soon as Tosh came through the door. He and everyone else wore the same clothes they did every day. There were no decorations or music. A woman from the Authority who Tosh didn’t recognize was parked in the corner beside two guards who were mainly there to make sure Art went into the Box alone.

“Hello, Tosh,” he said, giving her a hug. He greeted the others similarly. “Please, have some food.”

A table was dressed with fresh pineapple, sorghum cakes, and an assortment of vegetables cut into pieces. Art must have saved Ration Rewards for years to get it. Had he planned it that way? Pineapple was the most precious of all Tower treats.

Art introduced his cousins, current and former coworkers, and some of his friends from Elder 5. They made small talk as though it was some kind of party, but Tosh kept finding herself studying Art’s face. She’d heard his confessions of fear and anxiety and knew that the gregarious man working the room was just a façade.

At exactly 8 a.m., the woman from the Authority got up and spoke into a microphone at the front of a small dais, all smiles and pleasantness. A chair sat beside it facing the crowd.

“Be seated, everyone. Mr. Behrens, please take the chair here.”

There was a smattering of applause as Art made his way up. The woman looked bored, like she’d rather be anywhere else. She read from a prompter set into the narrow podium and hardly looked up.

“Thank you all for coming to today’s Quietus,” she said. “My name is Brenda Lucerne and I’m an assistant director in the Directorate of Health. As you all know, this is a celebration. Not just of Arthur Behrens’ life, but of our ways and systems in the Dome. Just as Art deserves a good, long rest, so, too, does a young family somewhere in our city deserve a child.

“We are born, we serve the Dome, and we die. Like a good story, none of these chapters can stand on its own. Without a destination, a journey is not really a journey. Let’s take a few minutes to revisit Arthur’s journey. IDA, please play the life summary for Arthur D. Behrens.”

She stepped aside and a screen descended from the ceiling as the lights dimmed. Art turned in his chair to watch. Because Tosh knew how the Dome’s information systems worked, she knew what was happening.

IDA had combed through a lifetime of Art’s CHIT data to find spikes and valleys in his dopamine, cortisol, and adrenaline levels. Those were correlated to events, and the events linked to people who were there with him. Audio snippets from those events, combined with audio and emotional reactions from others, provided all the context IDA needed to re-create his life in detail, complete with cinematic camera movements and a wistful soundtrack.

Art as a boy eating his first little sorghum cake with beet-sugar frosting.

Art as an adolescent kissing a girl after curfew and running from Authority police.

Art receiving his Placement.

Art meeting Elaine.

Tosh beating Art at video chess for the first time.

Art’s last walk around the city with Tosh and Owen.

The whole thing took about 5 minutes. By the end, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Even Tosh got choked up. If IDA understood anything, it was emotions. Not one second of his 59 years of work made the final cut.

When the lights came back up, a few people clapped. Tosh didn’t join them. An icy fist closed around her heart as every second brought them closer to the moment where she’d have to say goodbye.

The woman from the Authority returned to the podium.

“What a life you led, Art. Truly remarkable. But not even IDA can capture all that you’ve meant to people over the past 75 years. If any of you would like to say a few words to Art, now’s the time.”

She returned to her corner. There was an awkward couple of moments where nobody moved, but finally people started coming up to the microphone to share their thoughts.

A rough-looking man who had apprenticed with Art thanked him for his kindness, and for kicking in Ration Rewards for the celebration of his grandson’s birth.

Art hugged every person after they were done then joined them behind the podium for his own parting thoughts. He said he was grateful for having known them. Grateful for their friendship or counsel. It was always he who benefited, not the other way around.

It went on like this for some time, during which the woman from the Authority kept checking the clock in the back of the room. Finally, there came a point where no one else got up. Owen touched her elbow.

“Aren’t you gonna say something?” he asked.

She blinked away a tear and stood just as the Authority officiant appeared ready to wrap things up. Tosh stood and the woman returned to her seat.

Tosh stepped up onto the little dais and adjusted the microphone. The screen displayed the next part of the Authority woman’s script but she didn’t read it. Her nose was running. She wiped it on her sleeve and leaned in.

“My name is Toshiko Yamamura. Art has been my friend for almost 20 years. I lived my entire adult life without parents. Art lived his without children. I guess that made us a good pair. Two lonely misfits trying to figure it all out.”

Art chuckled appreciatively. She turned to look at him, the lines of his face seeming to deepen as he listened. It was everything she could do not to melt into a blubbering puddle.

“The Authority likes to talk about this ritual as though we should be grateful for it. Like we should all be happy that our friend is going to disappear from our lives forever. Well I’m not grateful. I’m angry.”

She turned around to look directly at the woman from the Authority, who stiffened in her chair in the corner and narrowed her eyes at Tosh. People in the crowd eyed her and each other nervously. This wasn’t how it usually went.

“Somewhere along the line, a bunch of Cytocorp executives got together and wrote the Charter. All the rules we all live by, they made up. But not a single one of them ever had to live with those decisions. The Originals only agreed to it because they were scared. They were so desperate to be part of the future that they didn’t question any of it — even the part about having an expiration date.