Carola Dibbell - The Only Ones

“Ma!” I hear her voice! It sounds different.

I’m like, “Ani! Ani! Thank God you are alive!”

She goes, “Ma. Come on. I am a Subject now. Don’t intervene.”

“Ani! I will come and get you!”

She goes, “If you try to intervene I will not ever message you again!”

So first I’m like, ok. Then I’m like, very good?

“Ma, you will be so proud! I did a Seal Room test. What Subjects call, Seal Room test.”

But she is just a minor! But with the new lesser flu interfering so much with who is available for Subject, I guess the guys who run those tests do not have a problem bending the rules. Well, they never did.

And I don’t know what happened but, well I’m not saying she knows where she is but she says it’s ok. “New York! Vermont!” she goes. “What does it matter?”

She does not want to go home. She is going to find a vidPhone!

Then the City Line hole is blockaded from the new lesser flu panic. I cannot even get to work, let alone the Nassau County Board with vid capacity. I end up at the Main Street library Board, but the screen is out. Still, the sound worked.

You probably want to know how the Seal Room test went to find out if it is in the genes, and, yes, she passed the Seal Room test. It was nothing bad, just some flus, like HP51, H1N1v, HP53, H274y. She didn’t get anything.

A lot of this stuff it is mixed up in my mind, what happened when. I guess at that time, it is July, August, and she is sixteen years, two or three months old and I am always wondering, is she still alive?

Then it’s fall. She’s in Massachus on Kissena BoulevardThonetts, doing another Seal Room test. So I’m like, oh, very good. I’m really trying not to intervene. I go, what pathogens?

She goes, they call it filovirus series.

Well, I will tell you this. You know how I used to do the Seal Room test, and I was like, what, I’m going to die? Well when she messages from Massachusetts she is doing the filovirus series, Ebola, Marburg, slatewipers, I could hardly move. I said, “Ani. Do you have to do this?”

“Ma. We’re Sylvain hardies. I’m not getting anything.”

“Please do not do this test.” So that is one more difference between her and me. If it was me, I would not bat an eye.

So what? Either way, she did the filo series. And she’s so mad at me for intervening, she doesn’t contact me for a really long time. The City Line blockade did loosen up and I could take a message at the vidBoard there again but nothing comes. I have no way to message her. I’m like, that’s it. It’s over — she did the filo series and got something, the Sylvain hardy thing is not in the genes. I could hardly even move, I could hardly even walk till I finally got the message blink at the library Board and made the vidContact, she’s still alive. And I could see her face! The screen worked!

She goes, “Ma!” Her hair has grown. “Come on, Ma. I passed with flying colors!”

So this time I’m like, very good, how special is that but would she be a little careful what she gets into?

She’s like, “Ma! We’re Sylvain hardies. What! I’m going to die?” So that is one thing we do have in common. I was just like that when I was her age. Sixteen and a half years old!

Still alive.

She’s back in Vermont.

Still alive.

It sounds like she’s looking for a Host farm. Is this a different life or what? Maybe you are wondering, what happened to selling viables? Why does she need to be a Host? Weren’t the Seal Room tests to verify the, you know, track record so her viables would sell?

Well, it’s hard to believe, but it starts to look like Rauden and I are the only ones in the whole Northeast who could bring nuclear Transfer off and for now she is looking for whatever work she could get.

So I’m on the Nassau County vidPhone, on my break, trying to show, you know, Support. To tell the truth, I’m worried she won’t keep in touch if I give her a hard time but I can’t help it. I know when I was her age I been on the Mound for years. I already lost half my reproductive system and was like, whatever. Now I’m so panicked she is going to try for Host, I could hardly even talk. But I manage to say, oh! Very good — but is Hosting a little dangerous?

She’s like, “Ma, we’re hardies and should get really good rates for Donor work. But no one I meet knows how to make viables from me. The solo egg is a really hard sell, even of hardy product. What I get paid for Hosting, Ma! I’m halfway to India. I could even be a virgin Host!”

Now maybe you are thinking, man, with all the time I put into school this, school that, do the work, very good — and she is going to be a virgin Host? To tell the truth, well, right, I would of rather she was a Tech. But what happened now, I will tell you, Ani made history.

Not at first. At first she didn’t even make a sale. She was all up and down the sticks for months trying to pitch product and off we go.e g, let alone find clients who want her for Host. At least she finally found one Board that sent good vid. She really looks different! Her hair got really long and she has a, I don’t know, scarf. Not like the scarf I wore so Dan won’t notice anything when she went to East Side Girls, but to keep warm. She says she chose the scarf because it’s plaid, like the furniture in the garden apartment. She needs a warm scarf because she is at some goddamn Host farm in the middle of nowhere, what they call, Northeast Kingdom. She has the hardy Proofs from the Seal Room tests and I guess the clients she finally hooked up with was open minded because they like a hardy Host for the viable they carried in a cryoPak they already bought from someone else, and they sign a contract and make a promise and Ani does too.

And they don’t know how lucky they are how it turned out. First they ran more tests, then they have two shady OBGYNs who blew a viable to Ani’s uterus and ok it didn’t stick at first but they tried again and then they try again and just before her seventeenth birthday they found out it worked! Seventeen years old! She was a Sylvain hardy who could Host a child! She was the only one I ever heard of who could. And these guys — clients, brokers, OBGYNs — they don’t even know how unusual that is. They don’t even know she made medical history. They don’t know what a Sylvain hardy even is or how lucky they are she is one.

Because it turns out one of these new lesser flus is not as lesser as they say, in fact some people say it is such a slatewiper, it’s going to be another Big One. Well it is not as bad as that. It was bad though. When it came down from Canada, the deaths are quadruple digit, which in that part of Vermont there was not a whole lot more than that to start, but when it’s over Ani’s still alive. The kid inside her too.

The Parents, no.

So the Host farm director, who is also still alive, is shady like most of them, and is going to sell the child to other Parents from some other state but Ani says, hello? I made a promise here. I do not Host this child for just anyone. So she ran off with the child!

This next part she is in Canada. She got through the border checkpoints and is in some kind of goddamn Haven that is promoted by the goddamn K of L, Canadian chapter. K of C L. Man! I guess Canadian vigilantes are doing better than ours because they have their own goddamn Haven. Still! What was she thinking? Who do the K of C L even need a Haven from? What are they, going to raid themself?

At least they have a good Board because I could finally see how she looks with the, you know, baby inside. Her eyes is like, I don’t know, milk. Her skin is like milk too, but puffy. She still has the scarf. It’s Canada. It’s already November. It’s cold. And there is a boy behind her I could see in the vid too, Ferron, some kind of, I don’t know, he looks like some kind of mutant but she is so proud. He is going to be the father! I don’t even know what she meant!