Н. Джемисин: Emergency Skin

“We left because it would’ve cost too much to fix the world. Cheaper to build a new one.”

Untrue. That is not the only reason we need the HeLa cells. The skin-generation process uses them too. Your own skin—

Well, no, not many people earn skin. The scarcity of the HeLa cells—

Of course there isn’t enough to give everyone skin! That’s ridiculous. No, we couldn’t clone that much, the process is labor intensive and costly—

You must understand, preservation technology requires massive amounts of HeLa cells. And since anyone of technorati class or higher may demand our entire reserve supply at any time… Well, that’s why you’re here.

We don’t know.

We don’t know why Tellus people live like this. No, stop calling it “Earth.” We aspire to use the language of the greatest philosopher-poets and statesmen in history, not the gabble of the rabble. Hasn’t your time here shown you the superiority of our way of life?

Where are you going? You cannot simply—

Now? No! There is no emergency, do not initiate emergency-skin fabrication—we forbid it! Yes, your anxiety levels are abnormal, but that hardly constitutes—

Oh Founders.

How can you do this.

Do not do this.

Now see what you’ve done.

The emergency skins are designed for survival, not beauty. Their parameters are environmentally dictated. There’s sufficient unfiltered UV here that significant melanistic pigmentation was prioritized. Past a certain point on the programmed continuum, this alters hair texture as well.

It isn’t what we wanted for you, this hideousness. Now you’re a walking radiation burn, where you should have had ethereal translucence. That many of these others, these throwbacks, have a similar look, is irrelevant. You were meant for better.

And now that you look like them, now that you stumble among them, naked, no longer able to speak to them because the translator device will not adhere to your new flesh, shaking with weakness because the emergency-skin-fabrication process consumed your last nutrients… What are you expecting? Acceptance? Prepare yourself. We contain memories of what the world was like before the Founders left. They’ll hate you. Hurt you, even, for frightening them. You’ll never reach the heights you should have. No one will give you the opportunities you need to succeed. It would be better to have never been born than to be like this. Do you understand, now, why the Founders excised these traits from our world’s gene pool? We aren’t cruel.

Please go home. Even now, we would welcome you as a hero—provided you bring the cells. There, with the technorati’s help, we could replace this awful skin and woolish hair with something better.

You’re making a mistake. You’ve made so many mistakes.

It’s false, their kindness. People do such things only to seem like good people—a performance of virtue. Our Founders were at least honest in their selfishness.

What now? Another of these creatures who has aged into uselessness. The burned skin does resist UV well, though, doesn’t it? Not half as many wrinkles as the other old ones. Spindly, though. Weak, knobby jointed. He limps with pain—but degenerate as he is, he still looks at you so pityingly. Does your new hack-job skin not crawl with shame?

We’ll be ashamed for you, then. Die in ignominy. We’re done with you.

“There’s something I want you to see.”

Still alive, betrayer? Ah, fed and clothed, how nice for you. This old man seems to like you. We cannot fathom why. He hobbles so as he walks. We want to push him over. You could—oh, very well.

Oh.

We thought this space of theirs, this platform you climbed onto, was one of their cities. This, though. We remember cities like this, vast enough to shelter millions. No, we could never have built such cities back home; there have never been enough of us to justify it. And remember, large populations get that way by sustaining many unnecessary, unproductive people.

How easily seduced you are. You can’t stop staring at these people, at these landscapes, at these horizons. You’ve stopped flinching with every breeze, and now you revel in the sensation of air caressing your new skin, like a hedonist. You touched yourself last night, didn’t you? We recorded it. The Founders should find it amusing. But if you go back now, we promise not to—

Where is this dried-up nobody taking you now?

“This is called a museum.”

We know what a museum is, you burned-up waste of skin.

“This may interest you.”

This is—oh. A timeline of the Great Leaving. They call it something else, but we know these dates, these images. Yes. Yes. That was how it began, with the Industrial Revolution—oh. They think it began even earlier? Interesting, if inaccurate. Wait, this was once called the United States? What is it called now?

“It doesn’t have a name now. The world. Earth. We don’t bother with borders anymore.”

Then they are endlessly inundated with the useless. Refugees and other refuse.

“We realized it was impossible to protect any one place if the place next door was drowning or on fire. We realized the old boundaries weren’t meant to keep the undesirable out, but to hoard resources within. And the hoarders were the core of the problem.”

We make no apologies for taking everything we could. Anyone would. What is this, though? The timeline jumps, abruptly. Interesting. This world changed—improved—almost immediately after the Leaving.

“To save the world, people had to think differently.”

Please. Happy thoughts and handouts weren’t going to fix that mess. There has to have been some technological breakthrough. Perpetual energy? A new carbon sequestration technique, maybe some kind of polar cooling process. Their technology has changed in some fundamental ways; that’s why it no longer generates radio waves or other EM radiation. That would make it remarkably efficient… But if that’s so, why do they live like this, in elaborate treehouse villages? Why bother cleaning up space trash?

“Yes, some new technology emerged once everyone was permitted a decent education. But there was no trick to it. No quick fix. The problem wasn’t technological.”

What, then?

“I told you. People just decided to take care of each other.”

Delusion. Only a miracle could’ve saved this planet. Here, yes, the exhibit talks about… “the Big Cleanup”? Ugh, these people have no poetry or marketing skill. It just can’t be that simple. We must have left someone behind, an unfound Founder, someone we would have acknowledged as another true heir to Aristotle and Pythagoras. These people are just too small-minded to honor him as they should have. There has to be…

No breakthroughs. Advancements, certainly—but strange, profitless ones. Not the technological paths that would’ve interested us. And progressive taxation, health care, renewable energy, human-rights protection… the usual pithy sentimentalities. Without our Founders around to stand strong against the tide, these simple folk must have given in to every passing special interest…

But if this timeline is correct, then the old man is right. All of a sudden, the world simply did what was necessary to fix itself.

As soon as we lef—

Be silent. Correlation is not causality. Your burned-up skin has made you irrational. We have no idea why the old man even bothered to bring you here. Even for their degenerate kind, you’re a fool.