Benhie stood in the line, and it didn't have the usual people in in because she wasn't on her usual schedule: she had a late meeting at work the following day, and so she wouldn't be able to make her usual post-work grieving. So today instead, and it was only Day 4, mid-week, instead of Day 5, which she didn't suppose would make any difference, except that she was wrong.
The usual people in her queue were a mom with her four-year-old, who could have been in Childing but wasn't and so had to spend all of her time joshing the youngster into quiet (it was a personal choice to spend your time joshing youngsters or not- Benhie saw no sense in doing it while you were queuing to grieve, but to each their own;) There was a man who had what appeared to be the exact same copy of his word puzzle every week, a giant one that he had to lay out on the floor like a map and shuffle forward every time the line moved; there was another woman who looked remarkably like her- mid-forties, light brown hair, purple contacts, very big handbag. Today's line had a father with a teenager, and it was obvious that the father was showing his son the task ahead, or he intended to when it was his turn. There was another mother who had two infants with her, the maximum for birthing or minding in their country (the places that didn't enforce a strict population control were considered little better- no, worse!- than penal colonies) and there was another woman who should have looked like her, given the age and the time of day, but didn't. Still, everyone was there for a grieving and because of that there was a parallel feeling from her Day 5 line to this Day 4 line. Benhie looked at eyes as they met hers and smiled a bit and watched the bit of smile she got from the others. It was familiar as it could be.
She moved, slowly but inevitably, to the front, and when it was her turn she walked to the booth with the lit-up number above it. It was her favorite booth, because the robot who'd be serving her was new and in great shape, so she wouldn't have to enunciate to make herself understandable to aging sensors and she wouldn't have to touch one of its' long, many-jointed arms when they got stuck moving one of her slabs. She breathed in the booth, taking in the sad air of everyone who'd gone before her that day- to Benhie, the air in a grieving booth was always sadder than regular air, even though it was reclaimed by the same ventilator as in the vestibule or the hallways. Sad air, she thought as she put in her memory request: it tangs. It smells sour like milk and long-ago burned meals. It was a description that she never told anyone, not even the Talkee that she was mandated to see bi-weekly, for her continued well being. Being a bi-weekly was pretty acceptable. It was hard when it was three times per week: once they learned of it, most people couldn't look her in the eye.
Her memory came up. It was on a screen and it was projected, too, so that she was watching the video of her departed partner while she stood inside the image. Guy was shirtless in bed, but had his pyjama pants on, because this memory wasn't from their beginning. Benhie smelled the sheets around her and she felt instantly exhausted, as she had been on that night. It was a fighting night. She wondered why, of all her bad Guy memories, she'd picked this one: it was just a non-descript repeating argument, the kind that tired you immensely but that you couldn't quantify the next day. She supposed she was a fucking masochist. Anyway, anyway...Guy was talking, and he was exhausted too- there were crusts around his eyes and his hair was shiny on one side where he'd pulled his hand through it, over and over, in frustration.
"I don't know how many times we have to talk about it. I have to- we need to synchronise our feelings-" He said this disjointedly. Poor Guy, she thought.
"I don't think it's possible to do that. I don't think people can synchronise- that's really the thing you're holding out for? Don't you think that's not possible?" Benhie wasn't sure she felt one way or another about it, she remembered: she was just arguing the point to keep his attention.
"You've read the same things I have, you've seen the same Talkee- I didn't think that was a great thing, a great idea I mean, but we did that. I can't not talk to you when..." He sighed, he pulled his hand through his hair. It was the right side, she noticed. Out of nowhere there was this vertiginous feeling of being in the middle of every night like this with Guy, as if she'd requested every slab of nighttime memories she had all at once.
The air was still spoiled milk, but there was sweat from the unclean sheets and a tang of red wine and the smell of vapor liquid, because she had taken up vaping out of desperation during the end of things- she needed it for her hands, she told herself. She needed to hold something while she had these ridiculous conversations with him, these threads of thought that became the kind of snakes that ate their own tails. There were sounds of night in their bedroom, thickened by the layering of memory so that birds became flocks and cars became trains, practically. The conversations themselves became dense snatches of repeated phrases, "You can't open-" and "I want you to but every-" and "Well that's something I don't know, again-". There were others. Benhie felt her hand clench her vaping wand too hard, and the shirt she was folding too fiercely, and her own hair because she'd tried Guy's method of running her hands through it. She felt all that at once, and it was, predictably, too much.
She moaned first. It seemed the right thing to do it felt right, so she moaned some more. Hologram Guy went on saying something about her appointments because he'd always believed that the answer to any ennui was to talk at your Talkee, and he said it many times at once in the booth. The walls practically tremored with his views on her stubbornness. She got angry, just angry, with nothing to bring her anger too ("Your Talkee" said Guy, in multiples, as if the hologrammed men had been listening to her thoughts) and no living person to witness it. She was so mad, and just hummed with fury (literally: she'd moved on from moaning) which grew to hissing which grew to a shout, and she turned inside the projected Guys in her air, from the smells and the confusion and the alarming sensation of touching more than two things at once, as if she had tentacles. She tried to stomp out but was stopped by the door, which locked from the inside when you closed it. She felt how unfair it was to be overwhelmed like this and then be disallowed the ability to stomp out of the space, and how it was the most unfair part of the whole experience.
The line people had changed, gotten their own grieving booths. Now there was an older woman who stood straight as a stick, and a couple who both had glassy, uncaring eyes, and someone young, probably not yet out of Choose school. They looked at her almost sympathetically, as if they thought they should be apologizing for something. She wanted to stomp but felt that would be rude, so she walked back out to the street and to her apartment. When she got there, she stomped all around her studio, marking the floor in one spot and making a racket- sometimes humming, sometimes not- until her downstairs neighbor came to her door to ask her to stop. When he went away mollified, she sat and the anger drained from her. She tried the CogThink that her Talkee had taught her: she told herself it was just a glitch, she replayed the session in her head and modified the effect (just a little- that was the trick to it, you only changed how things had happened just a bit, to keep it "authentique" as her Talkee smilingly put it.) She breathed the non-sad air. It was a good thing that she'd just changed the scent cartridge in her ventilator- her studio air smelled like coconuts, or what she assumed were coconuts since she'd never smelled a real coconut. It was calming.
Her next grieving session was her regular day the following week, Day 5. It had been too long since that terrible glitchy session on Day 4 of the following week, and her Not-Boss at work had noticed a fall in her productivity. Benhie hadn't noticed, which was the most alarming thing about it: she was a real fan of productivity, she was at the assemblies right in the front row mouthing the slogans and catchphrases ("We're all part of the Hive" was one, though no one knew what a hive was anymore; also "Can you yes you can can you yes you can can you yes you can can you YES WE CAN" with clapping.) She normally felt that anything that increased productivity, on an individual or a group scale, was ultimately a good thing. It was the reason for the Grieving and the Talkees in the first place: when you managed your SAD! (for Start Altering Despondency!,) you became the most efficient version of yourself possible.
Except since her breakup with Guy, she'd felt less that way. Except that when she was being honest with herself, which she was doing more and more lately (unintentionally, but there it was,) she had lost sight of productivity as a golden mean since before she broke up with Guy. It was the reason she'd been made a tri-weekly Talker.
The line was as it should have been, with all the regulars. The woman who looked so much like Benhie had changed her hair. It was a different color, but not different enough to erase the likeness between them. Benhie smiled brightly at the woman, who smiled back in the practiced way. Benhie was in a good mind for this session. 8 days was too long to wait for your turn to have negative emotions. She'd picked a memory slab that had something good for her, she hoped. It was the slab with the "I love you's" and the face touches and the waking in the middle of the night just to make love. She intended to shed a tear, wipe it with a new handkerchief she'd brought for the occasion, and go back to herself. She was looking forward to the after.
The sad air was the same, and she handed over the slab with some enthusiasm. She felt hungry for it, and the memory was going to be a steak to her, full of fortifiers. The arm took her slab and popped it in: Guy was there, naked under the covers, smiling. Guy was all around her, smiling. She smiled back. Then, just in that nice pre-crying moment, Guy was everywhere at once: naked, half-naked, clothed, packed even. For some reason the glitch from last week had reproduced asexually, and now she was faced with all of the crying of Guy and all the loving of Guy at the same time. The sheet smell was asphyxiating. Guys hair was shined and not-shined from his hand going through it on the right side, or not. She was in the center of every memory at once, every stupid fight and stupider fit of giggles, she heard Guy's voice talk about her beautiful mouth and her lack of laundry skills and how stubborn she was, and how he was done. He said it like that: "I'm done." She felt the derision for the phrase- he's done, he's like a meatburger that way- and she felt the melting edges of herself when he mentioned her mouth.
Benhie screamed and ran at the robot. It was a robot arm, really, since there wasn't any other piece of a robot in the booth, and she ran at it, her handkerchief still tucked in her fist. She shoved at it and it rolled away, designed for this, indulgent even. So she picked up the chair that was provided in every booth and brought it over her head, much higher than she would have guessed she could, and brought it down on the thing. That helped: there was a nasty clang, so she kept doing it until the robot arm, not designed for this, snapped at one of its' fragile joints and the front piece of it fell to the ground. Benhie put the chair down and sat on it. She was exhausted! The memories that she'd not requested swam around in her head, and despite the fact that the holograms weren't there any more she lived in a miasma of her previous couplehood for twenty minutes. She just sat and breathed while it went away. She wasn't thinking of anything. It was a tremendous relief.
When she left the Grieving both, the line with her usual people had already been served and were in their boxes or gone. Benhie slinked past the current liners. If anyone was looking at her strangely she didn't notice. She went straight to her apartment and thought about things...truthfully she thought about Things, such as why she was not charmed by her own drive for efficiency any more and why Guy hadn't just come out and said what needed to be said. She might have saved herself so much trouble, and they might have stayed together, though she doubted it. He was GAtoGA (Going Along to Get Along) and that right there was the crux of their problem. She Thought more. She was not going to be a production slave any more, not because she was opposed to the idea but because she knew that if she went into another Grieving booth, she would go fully mad. Everything could work perfectly but now she had another memory to Down/Up, but it was a memory of every other memory. She had broken the robot arm but she hadn't broken anything else. She didn't feel like confessing; she didn't feel like making the appointment with another piece of robot (the head, she supposed) to record what had happened, sitting very still for twenty minutes while the sheet of light crossed and re-crossed her eyes, making another slab for her. She didn't feel like having an Apology Event at work, despite the fact that she'd be "encouraged" to bring cake, which meant that she could choose the flavor. She felt like...running. Running? She wasn't sure what that meant exactly, but she thought it meant leaving and staying gone somehow.
Her apartment was a fine place but she had to leave it and she did, taking only a few things that she thought she would really need, such as underwear and money and anything that could be categorized as a snack. She'd just gotten her weekly delivery of groceries so the bag she was using was full of snacks, thank goodness. Benhie looked around, unsure of herself again, but when she thought it out it was the best option for her. It was the option with the least amount of Grieving in it. She went to a Lodge that was right down the street from her and stayed there for two days, nibbling on her snacks, getting off the bed to stretch and walk around the room but otherwise staying put. The TV was on the whole time, including when she slept which was an example of terrible Sleepytime Nopes that she normally abhorred. She was a stickler for Sleepytime Yups and shunned the Nopes, but this was an exception.
On the second day she was rewarded (if that's what you can call it) by the news playing something about her: there was an entreaty for her return. "She's just so Productive normally, and we miss that at work. Benhie, if you're watching this, please come back. The arm at the Grieving center can be paid for- " she blushed when her Not Boss said this, it was the truth for anyone viewing to deconstruct as they liked- "but you have to come back, we all miss you. It's not as terrible as it sounds." Her Not Boss finished with a beautiful smile for someone, but Benhie didn't think it was for her. None of that was very terrifying, but it wasn't soothing and it didn't change her motivation one bit. She had no doubt that she could pay for the arm and go back to being the one who got a Well Done Hoversticker above her head every Day 6 for all of her colleagues to see, but she wasn't done with whatever she was doing yet. She moved to another Lodge and stayed there for three days.
It was confusing: what did she want? This was the question she asked herself every day she was holed away, and every time she saw the begging for her return on the television that she was fully addicted to now. There were people besides her Not Boss asking her to come back, people from work and her sister, whom she hadn't seen in many Ages, who looked pleased at the attention. No one said anything that changed her mind, though she always watched with as open a heart as she could manage. What did she want? She moved around, she used the Lodges that were the least expensive since she knew her money wouldn't last, she bought food out of machines in the lobbies of the Lodges or little stores that were right up the block. She knew she'd have to change something permenantly but she didn't know what it was, and she was beginning to resent her mind for taking her on this pointless walkabout.
At Lodge #4 she was thinking it while she was sitting on the pot, and the small bit of glass shelving that was above her head, big enough to hold two hand towels and one washcloth but nothing else, came unscrewed or unmoored or unconnected to the wall and fell on her, nicking her neck and then clattering to the side, whole. It was a shock: she'd been so deep in contemplation, and who checks the screws on an above-head shelf every time they sit? So it was a shock, like getting hit in the back of the head with a sports ball you didn't see coming, and Benhie burst into tears. The crying felt so immediately good, like having an orgasm or finally emptying your bladder or reaching the perfect point of fullness in your belly, that she smiled while she did it.
Thank You she thought to no one.
