The afternoon has grown heavy, darkened by clouds tumbling thick through the sky. Halcyon glows. Music hums through the streets, as people rise to the call of this party for their coming year. They celebrate the passing time, as they celebrate the birth of tomorrow, here in mid-winter. People are drunk, high, and some are undressed in the streets. Bots, like spiders the size of dogs, climb the buildings, decorating, hanging lights and banners. The rain has faded to a softly falling mist and the air is cooling. Something is gone. Something vital will never come again.
Entering her apartment Harmony hangs her raincoat on its hook. She sits on the couch in the living room. Taking the remote in her hand she turns on the stereo. Synthesizers moan. A diva wails. Replacing the remote on her small end table she picks up the glass pipe next to it, by her hand. The flat-screen lights up at her presence. It still bears Orion’s manifesto, page three. There is so much more. We were at the beginning.
She says sadly, “Give me peace.” She fakes a smile, feeling poetic, as she puts her lighter to the bowl, and it squirms alight. Slowly her lungs are filled. He’s some sort of enigma, Harmony, said Orion, smiling. What? Nothing, I’m just high, shining in the twilight of my infancy, unfulfilled. Prophesizing. I’m fading.
Pulling the glass from her lips she exhales, her body shines with a moment’s exhilaration, and she thinks as the cloud is rising, Put aside your fucking pipe, Lover. Tell me what is on your mind. Nine years gone. Voice your dreams. Where is the fire? Tell me what you feel. You’ll be gone tomorrow.
Share the orgasm of your brilliance with me now. Don’t wait. Why are we so afraid of reality, of honestly communicating, risk, of feeling pain, of doing anything?
But I’m happy, she said to him. I couldn’t be better. I can’t tell you how much I love you. In our impotence there’s no call for love, no room for my sadness. There’s no need for me to tell you how unhappy I am, how numb I am, how I long for my youth. I don’t want you to understand my pain, because it will hurt you. I’m afraid that you’re not like me. I’m afraid that you might be.
Give me your hand, Orion.
I’ve passed through some strange dream, come out the other side, and the door sealed tight. The sky cracked and the world was made of glass. Broken by less than a kiss.
Wake up. Something is gone.
Wake up. So what if I did? And be the only one?
“Enigma,” she says to her pipe, her voice shrouded in sad music. She throws the pipe hard against the wall, leaning, elbows on her knees. With a pop it broke, odd shapes of glass scattered to the floor. She crawls over to the mess and begins to pick up the pieces. A jagged one slices her index finger, giving one small bulge of blood. As she examines this drop the autoduster slips around and atomizes the pipe with hardly a sound. She desires another hit. Escape. I don’t want it. Face it. I can’t think as it is. It’s all too much. Stop turning. Let me be true to myself. That’s it. There is nothing else.
Why do we never know when we have enough?
Why are we driven by such petty fixations? We throw away our love. Why do we fail? Why do we lie?
Why does sadness turn us to such rivers, Dad?
Can forgiveness be bought?
Can mistakes be paid for?
Why is it so hard to breathe?
Going to her bedroom, she hears the crash of the shower start running. There is a crumpled raincoat on her bed. She calls, “Hello?” through the door. After a few seconds the water stops running.
The door opens and Day is there, wrapped just in Harmony’s towel, brushing out the tangle of her hair. She says in a defensive tone, “I’ll be leaving.”
Harmony reaches past her into the sink, rinsing her hand, asking, “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think you want me here?”
“Should I?”
“It wasn’t my fault.”
“It doesn’t fucking matter.”
Her voice cracks. “Yes it does.”
“Just go, Day. Get your coat and go.”
“Well Orion wouldn’t have touched me if you were enough. You know that’s true. I slept with Sayd last night. He’s your ex?”
Harmony snaps, “Get the fuck out.”
Dropping the towel, Day sits on the toilet lid as she pulls on her socks. She says only, sincere but weak, “I’m sorry.” Her hip is paler than her thigh, fragile. Her ribs are bows. Day’s wings reflect in the bright tile, and corners of mirrors. After getting into her clothes, she moves past Harmony to the living room.
Still the stereo sings, “Be like a white dwarf star. The quicker fires fade.”
Harmony follows. She looks at Day’s white feathers, wet, newly cleaned, stemming from her back, from her thin shirt in two agile, living wings. Something in her light, her heedless decadence, is innocent. Curiosity. Is no sin. Putting a hand to her forehead, to block her storm of thought, Harmony says, “You’re still a kid.”
“What?” She turns, slowly trying to swallow. “No I’m not.”
“I’m not going to waste my time hating you.”
Day cries now, a tear. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” She thinks a moment. “Why would you be sorry? You can fly.”
“No I can’t.” Day wipes her cheek as she says this. She takes her raincoat, moving toward the door. Looking back Day says, defiant though crying, “That’s your issue, you know? You’re afraid of your own emotions. Nobody needs you. Nobody gets you. Ok, well what do you want then? I’ve known you two days and I can tell already.”
Harmony says, “I’m not hiding.”
“I’m just trying to be honest.” Day turns around fast and goes out.
Harmony stands still, staring at the door, for a long minute. Then she gathers her own coat and leaves the apartment.
Colored lights fall and glitter in the sky, between the towers, in the light rain of evening.
Harmony’s trip uprail is quiet, as she stares, disbelieving, at the floor. It is perfectly clean.
Apparitions dance through her mind, a torrent of memory. Lifting her eyes, lights streak under the sky. The heights of the city give way to the dark hills of the Asturian wilderness.
Approaching the SI complex for the second time today, she is alone in the abnormal quiet, crossing the cold stone path, surrounded by tall, yellowed grass. Her shadow crawls away across the darkening blades.
The white building is deserted as she quietly comes to the black doors.
Watching the bare gold cross above the door, Harmony goes in. As she enters, a light appears to guide her through the branching halls.
A thrumming noise rises behind her.
Harmony stops to look back, and there is a group of bots, humming black shapes coming out of the dark. Agile robots called Artisans, tall like centaurs, humanoid torsos on curved, plated insect frames, droids taller than Harmony, their heads sleek with many sensors, look at her with green lights in their eyes. Arms are shadowy metal, at ease at their sides. Small autodusters follow them, flat rings of light in the dark. They stay near the edge of the shadow as Harmony goes on. Somewhere ahead, from the indefinite depths of the blackened tunnel, echoes some sort of dense, pounding sound. Her walk slows now, but continues toward it.
A surreal emotion wells in her, then as she crosses under the arch the tinted door opens. Coming into the darkness of the chamber, its light comes on.
Orion is there, exactly as she saw him before, but the scene has otherwise become insane. Blood pools around the bodies, the raincoats of red and sky-blue gathering. Faith is in red-streaked blue, with her mouth agape and bone showing through the split of her head. Something in the tunnel outside the room slams again. A fourth girl is near the wall, slumped and bloody in a mass of blonde and white hair, in a disheveled black and white suit. The autodusters whir past Harmony’s feet.
Descending to her knees next to Faith’s divided body Harmony does not know what to do. As a big insect-centaur robot comes toward her she moves away, still on her knees.
With a motion of the tinted door, Day steps into the room. She gasps, stepping back into the wall, watching in shock.
Their raincoats tear from the sticky wet floor as the droids lift the bodies of the three women.
The Artisans leave with the broken forms—the shrouds of Faith and the orphan girls—draped across their arms, walking through the doorway into the blind darkness beyond Day. One autoduster stays still, near the body of the other girl, further away. The last Artisan, like a giant insectoid stage-hand, folds and carries away the small black chair, leaving Harmony and Day alone with Orion and the motionless body of the emaciated girl with the long, light hair.
Where is Sayd? Harmony silently wonders. This is too much. It flows over her as she stands, not quite getting in.
As a minute passes, Day is drawn to the center, to where Orion rests. Viewing his sterile form, she mutters the words, “I didn’t . . . I don’t . . . What’s in those tubes?” Turning back to Harmony she is crying, saying, “I’m going to be sick,” but Harmony does not respond. Day kneels.
In a daze Harmony then goes to Orion as well. Past fear, past pain, she moves her smooth hand over his charred skin. She takes his burned palm and folds her fingers around him. Closing her eyes, she feels his hand and it brings to her being a wave, overwhelming, memories, alive and unchanged as the sky.
Harmony opens her eyes at a sound. The remaining body, the girl with the unbuttoned shirt, streaked in blood, moves.
It struggles to rise.
The hands protruding from her sleeves are thin and long-fingered, knuckles bleeding, connected to delicate wrists and forearms, scraped red. She looks up. There is a large hole clean through her forehead. Blood is dried down her face and white shirt, in her tangle of long hair.
“Harmony,” she says unsteadily. Harmony does not respond. The girl speaks in quick, broken lines, a strange whine in her voice. “Day.” She pauses, struggling upright. “They can’t contain me.” She suddenly screams, “Rion!” She jerks her head up, toward his body. “No trust. No trust. Where is your fucking trust?” The other two are motionless as she winces, apparently fighting herself, never quite looking at them. She speaks again. “I can see the future. Let me go.” Now she pauses and laughs, not wiping her tear, staring up at the ceiling. “This currency of suffering. All you need is your willpower. Your birthright is this gift. Power of the sun. Love is gravity, little one. Love is gravity. Love is gravity. Crystalize. Rise. It is the only power. Stop hiding. Your bare humanity.” She is agitated now, but quickly calms again, wrapping her arms around her midsection and twisting her body, saying, “Ideas like chicks hatch in blood. This is more important. That’s true.” She does not land her eyes squarely on her still. “Even now our mind is a database.” Stepping backward into the wall she shrinks to the floor, skinny, weak and wounded. She whispers, “Thy name is greed. Machine. Thy name is legion.” Harmony looks to her but the air in her is gone. The blood, in slow rivers, shines inside of her. Harmony is drawn to the sight, but afraid of the emptiness turns her eyes away.
When Harmony emerges with Day into the fresh air outside the mist is changing to light snow. The flakes are small, falling in wandering circles to the earth, slowly, gently to the grass, melting on the asphalt and steel. An explosion rings somewhere nearby. They turn their heads to see, but the snow and the hill rising steep behind the complex blind their vision.
The echo comes again. They move toward the sound.