Chapter 14

Doubt.  Every night, I feel it.  Where there was your touch, the heat on my cheek, now I feel the cold palm of doubt.  Not you, Marco, never have I doubted you.  So certain I am of your principles, your commitment to a new way of life, that I have wondered how I can be worthy of you?

I know you love me.  I’m not questioning that.  “That.”  How is it an empty word like “that” once seemed the answer to every question?  A quick slip and an easy pass.  Words don’t seem as disposable anymore.

Each morning my parents would make me gather any trash in the flat from the evening before.  We’d send it out through the same actuator where our ship would arrive that night.  Then do it all again.  So much thrown away.  So many words sent via chat, skimmed over posts.  How much would I give to hear your voice against my ear, to feel the vibration of your words?

I can smell you now.  Your scent returns to me with the smell of the roses.

If you’ve never held a real rose, you wonder what the weight of the stem will feel like in your hand, whether the thorns will sting or if it’ll look vivid as in a digital picture or more dull as if represented by an emoticon.  Emoticons seem bare to me now like a wasteland in miniature.

A digital picture vibrates with color bolder than the real thing but never captures the way a petal fades on a dying rose or the way the picture you gave me peels back in time: he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me.  I haven’t forgotten the things you showed me from the physical age.  The old ways repeat in my mind, and they always end with “he loves me.”  That and the way you smell on my hooded sweatshirt.  Because of efficiency, no one complains that I’ve never washed it.

A digital picture has nothing on the smell of a rose.

To know that I am fading is what makes me doubt myself.  How can flesh compare to reason?  Only love seems as timeless as the pull of logic or the efficiency of tech.  I hate admitting that so much of what they teach me sounds true, only twisted to serve an end I don’t understand.  My teachers tell me my gifts are special, that one day I will not only understand these things but also help the Mod persuade others to internalize the rationale.  That I can help the rationale evolve, that my logic can live forever by becoming part of City.

They say hearts cannot live forever.  Not matter how deeply we love, our love will fade: mine for yours and yours for mine.  But they do not know what it is like to love you, Marco.  They say our kind of love, young and built on passion, is only trouble.  I say Marco is the kind of trouble I need.

They don’t like that response, Ms. Fields especially.  She always sounds threatened, unlike Ms. Snow, who inspires fear but shows none.  Ms. Fields gave me the bottle for doing my nightlies.  I’m certain they feel the nightlies will break my resistance to the rationale.  Not that I don’t appreciate its merits, but I have seen another way of life that can fill an empty bottle the way tech never will.  They say a filled bottle is just another example of waste.

They won’t give me another and won’t provide more paper once the bottle is full.  As usual they are using my own logic against me to bring me closer to submission.  Whatever clever response I provide, the next evening’s nightlies are designed to undo my logic, to make me disassemble my own defenses.  The form the nightlies take are varied: probability problems, equations for calculating paper’s contribution to the environmental hazard, code for programming energy-saving devices, and composition and design assignments for warning the public against the dangers of unnecessary waste.  Even self-propelled movement, like walking outdoors, is frowned upon because operating an elliptical not only improves one’s health but also generates radiant and coolant and light.  We are not to waste.  Resources are precious and expensive.  Preserving energy, even our own, strengthens City.  If the Mod had to generate energy for our flats, taxes on Privates would increase, and the nightly ship would grow smaller.  The Mod would be required to further ration water.

No one will explain how the water enters our pipes, only that the volume necessary for drinking and bathing is too great to make actuating it economically feasible.  That only recently did the tech evolve to allow for actuating items high in water content such as fresh fruit.  We are lucky that so many other things can be actuated, that we can program and operate machines remotely to generate food and product so that we don’t have to do tasks that require physical toil.  Whatever the assignment, my argument for reducing our reliance on actuators and tech is cast in doubt.

How much doubt can a girl survive when time moves so slowly?  If only I could see your sign in real time.  Every time I send an email I want to cry.  A typed @ has nothing on the real thing.  A typed @ is never followed by the touch of your hand, the brush of your hair against my cheek, the smell of your handmade cologne, the sound wind makes when moving through the tall grass, the moment’s delay between a bird’s coo and the flap of its wings or the fog on a window of the automobile after we kissed on a cold night.  Why, they ask, would you want to kiss in the cold?  To which I respond, why wouldn’t you want to produce your own radiant?  That is the response that always results in the most burdensome nightlies.
Talk about waste.

I’d rather feel your hand, hot or cold, traveling my collarbone than perfect ambient temperature.  When we kiss, I’d rather feel the chill on my spine, goose bumps on my arm. I’d rather leave my handprint in the fog on the glass.

So much has faded since I arrived here: your picture, my confidence and my ability to circumvent their logic.  My teachers increasingly rise to the occasion.  Ms. Fields, for one, seems to be taking digital tutorials in between our dialogues.  She’s always better equipped to dismantle my logic the next day.  Ms. Snow must be coaching her or providing refreshers via web programs.
Other than mapping applications, I always thought we had the same web access as our parents.  I don’t know about parents, but Private teachers and the Mod certainly have access to a broader web.  Rumors must have their basis in some fact.

I used to think it was sad that if we made a Marco + Emmy in the glass one night, it would have already faded when we returned the next.  Now I think you were right.  The way pre-digital things fade is what makes them most precious of all.