Cargo - (chapter 1.)

Chapter 1.

"Resident Deck Twenty Six, Yellow Circle," the elevator said. The doors opened onto an enormous number 26. Beneath that was a big yellow circle. Too big to miss. Practical signage for your modern retirement spaceship. 

I pushed my supply cart out of the elevator. Around the corner, the black reception desk was lit from behind and from beneath. It glowed warmly, even in the bright medical hallway lighting. Psychologically calculated light. 

Veronica was working. Thank god for small mercies. I don't think I could have handled one of the younger nurses with their smiling faces. I was already worried about seeing Robert again. I was worried about being back here at all. Veronica wasn't my age, but at forty at least she felt like another adult, and her familiar bored stare was so much more reassuring than a smile. 

"Welcome Home, Charles," Veronica said. Her voice was a deep monotone.

I picked up the pen to sign the guest log. We both knew that this wasn't my home anymore. 

"You know, in the commercial they're smiling when they say that," I told her.

Veronica reached out for the pen, her eyes still watching mine. She said nothing.

"Welcome home," I said. "They're smiling when they say, 'Welcome home!' Like it's a good thing."

"I know what you meant," Veronica said. Her expression did not change. "Shall I have a more enthusiastic staff member come out to greet you, Charles?"

"No. You're good. I think it was the advertisement that had it wrong."

At my feet I noticed a small red brown leaf, with just a bit of stem. It was teardrop shaped, with leathery skin that I could feel even before I reached down to pick it up. I knew that color, that shape. It was one of the ground leaves from the forest deck. Teaberry. 

I crouched down to pick it up and hid it in my palm. There should not be leaves here. There were no plants allowed on these decks. Plants belonged in the forest decks and the controlled biomes below. This was a treat. A secret piece of contraband. I slipped it into my pocket, and Veronica pretended not to notice.

"Anyway, I'm assigned to clean resident quarters this morning," I told her. "They have me running substitutions." I had only worked on this floor twice before. It was not my regular rotation. I preferred to work the data decks or the fabrication decks between crew shifts. I liked the spareness of those spaces. 

I liked the quiet. It let me focus on my work. It let me lose myself in the procedure, the correct sequence of actions required to clean each part of a room, the correct tools, cleaners, motions. There was so much satisfaction in the details, in doing something slowly and correctly. With people around, distractions could rush you.

"Your room is exactly as you left it," Veronica said. "We aren't legally allowed to reassign a room until the resident passes away."

"And so it waits, empty, for my inevitable return," I said. "Ominous, but easier to clean."

I pushed my cart down the bright hallway. I remembered what it had been like to live here. I remembered the tiny pit of shame inside me when strangers passed through, refusing to glance my way. Like I was a piece of cargo.

So I looked. I nodded. I nodded at the residents the way a normal person nodded at another normal person. There were people standing outside their bedrooms, laughing with one another in their pajamas. Grey or silver haired and just a little bit curled in on themselves. I straightened my own posture as I walked. It ached. Ahead of me, an unfamiliar woman smiled and waved. Her hand was mottled with a white splotch. Did I know her? I tried to think back, but I couldn't place her.

"Martin?" she said. "Martin?"

As I got closer, her face fell, and she turned away without saying another word. I was not Martin. None of these people looked familiar to me, either. That was a relief. I didn't want to be chit chatting all day. My janitor's uniform made me just another one of the background amenities on a neverending retirement cruise.

I could hear a woman's voice as I approached Robert's room. Room seven. The door was ajar, and the warm light from his bedside table was visible. Whoever it was, she was reading to him. 

He would have liked that. 

He would have appreciated a woman's voice reading him to sleep. Maybe he could still appreciate it. What did I know? I'm not a doctor. I pushed the door open, and the woman stopped reading. In Robert's room the lamp was on, and the woman was sitting in the armchair beside his bed. Her uniform was white and simple. Robert looked the same as he always did, like he was sleeping peacefully.

The woman lived on my deck. Yukiko. She lived in the cabin right next to mine. I'd never spoken to her, but I'd seen her in the halls, and Soup told me what her job was. Soup knew everyone's job. Yukiko sat with people who were dying. She was there so that they didn't have to die alone. She was there so that in the middle of the night, when they woke up scared, there was a kind voice beside them.

She was young, but with a job like that it made sense that she had one of those service animals. I couldn't help staring. It was a cat. A robot cat. It was sitting on her lap now, white and soft. I could hear its gentle purring. I hadn't seen one this close before. I'd managed to avoid them. It looked alive. Even the eyes had something to them.

Yukiko stood when she saw me, lifting the cat in her arms.

"Hey," she said. "I'll get out of your way. He shouldn't give you much trouble," She nodded her head toward Robert. Her warm smile undercut the joke. "He's a sweetheart." In her arms the cat purred louder, and nuzzled against her chin. "I know, I know," she told it. "Apparently, I should get something to eat," she said to me. "I forgot breakfast again."

Then she took her cat and left.

I pushed my cleaning supplies against the wall, and waited til the door clicked closed. I could hear her in the hallway, greeting another resident. After another few moments, it was quiet. The only sound was the soft almost-snore of Robert's breathing. I watched his chest rise and fall under the blankets. His face was too still. There were no eyelids fluttering. No dream-sighs. His chest rose and fell, and nothing else. I made myself watch him longer than I should have. I had to remember that he wasn't there. I had already said my goodbyes. This was something different. I was visiting a gravestone.

Once I had that clear in my mind, I sat down in the armchair beside the bed. 

"Hey Robert," I said. 

I looked down at the Teaberry leaf in my hand. They were small and rubbery and every leaf felt like a present waiting to be opened. I gently tore it in half and lifted it so I could smell the mint. It was a distinct but gentle smell. I didn't usually let myself tear the leaves like this. I didn't like to walk on them, or pick them, but this one was already picked. It would not be going back to the forest anyway. I loved the smell, but it was a rare treat now. 

When Robert was alive, I got to smell them all the time. He hadn't minded picking the leaves, tearing them open to show me. 

"Smell!" he would say. "Teaberry! But the berries are awful." He had grown up with them in the woods around his house. We had never seen one with berries on it on our walks, but I believed him. 

Robert was long gone, and I missed him. I used to visit him more. I used to come and sit beside his bed like this, and think about the past. There were some good times on Yellow Circle. There were. Back when I wasn't alone on this ship with all these strangers. Robert sat across the chessboard from me, laughing at how stupid chess players were, how stupid chess was and how stupid we were for wasting our time with it. It wasn't the chess we were there for, though.

I missed him, and that was okay. This was the right place for missing him.

I reached out and set the torn halves of the Teaberry leaf just under the pillow for him. I didn't want Yukiko or a nurse to see them just yet. They would take the leaf away. And why? Rules. Policy. 

A man in a coma wasn't allowed to smell the weird plants from his childhood?

I know he wasn't there. But he wasn't dead either. People left flowers on gravestones. And he was breathing in that smell. Maybe, even braindead, his body took some comfort in the memory, or some relaxing chemical would be released. 

It wasn't impossible. 

It sounds terrible to say this, but if Robert hadn't gone into a coma, I would still be living here, I would still be spending my days playing chess, waiting to die. He'd saved me. He'd had an aneurysm in his sleep one night, and suddenly I could see just how absolutely empty my life had become. 

Every day we spent an hour or two in the game room. That was what Robert had brought to my life. And it was good. But the other twenty two hours? The other twenty two hours of my day were spent waiting. I filled the hours with anything, anything at all. I spent so many afternoons looking out the deck windows at the stars. The shape of my ass was probably still embedded in that seat.

Without him, it became so stark and obvious.

"I wanted to thank you again for having an aneurysm," I said quietly. "At first I didn't see the benefit, but you really had my back on that one, Bob. Always thinking three moves ahead. Always ready with the brilliant sacrifice."

That was as close as I could get to actually thanking him for being my friend. 

It was as close as he would have accepted, too, I think.

I was still surrounded by strangers all the time now. But I had my job. I cleaned, and I loved cleaning. My days had purpose. I woke up, I put on my uniform and I was assigned to a task. I lived with the rest of the crew, in my own quarters on a crew deck. I had a life, now.

I stood back up and went to my cart. I unlatched the top and picked up the broom. 

"Well, I'd love to sit and chat all day," I said to Robert. "But some of us have work to do."

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