Philadelphia's Confession
#31 of The world of the Spirit of '67
When I was nine years old, I knew without doubt that I was going to die. It was there for all to see on the schedule board; Philadelphia: Prep-Work, September Through February, Stress-Testing, March Through Indefinite.
I wasn't the only one. Lagos had something bacteriological, and that was about when the doctors were looking to see what parts of Troy they could slice off next to free up nerves and neural pathways for installations, and I'm fairly sure that Paris also had a 'Through Indefinite' schedule, but I thought they were testing something psychiatric on him.
My brother Kiev had 'Through Indefinite' on his schedule just before he died, but he only lasted a couple of weeks.
In any case, I only remember my schedule. And then the new doctors came - although they weren't really doctors. They were a kind of staff, auditors. I didn't like auditors then and I don't like them now, except back then they were auditing the doctors and that was good, and nowadays they audit me, which isn't.
So I was nine and I knew I was going to die, and the auditors changed that when Troy yelled at them. I wish I'd yelled at them. I nearly did, but Troy yelled first. He said what I was going to say but was too scared to, when they were asking us if we would call what had been done to us misconduct, and you could see on their faces they thought we couldn't tell because we'd always just been treated like that, so misconduct would have to be something out of the norm, right?
Right.
Except Doctor Hawes gave us comic books on data chips and once in awhile Miss Betchett wouldn't be able to come on shift and sometimes it was Mister Crewe instead and Mister Crewe let us keep the data pad all the time, so between me and Troy and Toledo, we ended up reading most of the company charter and codes of conduct, and just because the first time I realized I was a person too and I mattered was when I was sixteen and Chrissy Fuentes listened to me doesn't mean that as a kid I wasn't aware of the fact that my life was fucking miserable and that there were occasional tiny moments I treasured.
So, yes. At nine I knew I was going to die. And at ten I wasn't. At ten I didn't know anything because we weren't in the labs anymore we were in this funny building with windows and the air wasn't conditioned and the doctor in charge wasn't a doctor, he was a priest, and he had this crazy idea that we were allowed to make our own schedule.
So we sat down with pads and we made our own schedule, and mine was Philadelphia: Learn How To Walk Again, April Through May.
I don't want to talk about the other things I had to learn how to do again, after they fixed my spine. Shame about the failings of one's own body is either instinctive in self conscious beings or I was taught about it as a child, I don't know which.
I don't like wheelchairs, and I don't like seeing my brothers in wheelchairs because it reminds me too much of what happened to me.
When I was twelve I found out that I liked sunshine, and when I was fifteen or so I figured out that girls were kind of interesting but I resigned myself to the fact that not much was ever likely to happen about that because girls were human and I wasn't human.
Then at sixteen, like I said, I worked out that I was a person. That I mattered. I kissed a girl when I was sixteen, too. I think I was the first out of my brothers to do so because Chrissy Fuentes was very sure she was the only girl in school to have kissed 'a man with a beard'.
That's also the year I lost God, because Chrissy talked with her priest and she didn't like what he told her, but apparently she didn't like me anymore either. I could almost handle Padre Munez kicking us out onto the streets because the Vatican told him to, because he wept over it and didn't want to do it and struggled between us and his faith but, in any case, other boys were already arriving at the orphanage and our things were packed. But Chrissy didn't even say two words.
I think when I was seventeen I figured out that I had to do something with my life, that's how all of my brothers felt, and then by the time I was nineteen I was in college in Israel on a scholarship I'd busted my ass for - just like all my brothers - and my brother Houston died.
I'm not sure how to explain this other than to say he didn't have it marked on his schedule, and everybody I'd ever known who died had it on their schedule.
I kind of lost it.
So I was twenty and back in San Iadras and they kept praising me because I was ideal - good with AI and with all that shit installed in my spine and all - and at twenty I was still in vocational training but I had enough money to pay for surgery to get the first few tumours out of Toledo, although they came back eventually. There was money for everything - Dallas's kidney transplant and then York killed himself and by the time Lagos got pneumonia there still wasn't enough money and I had to budget how much I was going to spend trying to save my brother's lives because of our fucked up medical situation. If I spent all of it on Lagos maybe Turin would have died instead, if I'd spent less on Lagos maybe I could've put Paris into Bethmore hospital instead of Naroi.
I spend a lot of time thinking about that shit.
My boss gave me a raise, they actually passed a fucking tin cup around the boardroom for me when Boston went into a coma and that probably saved his life. I scrambled for it, I begged, I thanked, and I am barely part of their corporate little world.
There's a fund now, a great big tin cup society at large tries to fill and so far only one of my brothers has died, and that was because I was too busy earning like crazy to get in touch and let him know I cared. That maybe, maybe that stabbing pain in his back isn't just muscle fatigue, but impending kidney failure.
My therapist says it's not my fault and I shouldn't blame myself.
I was nine, I knew I was going to die. I'm twenty five and none of my brothers need my money anymore but I keep working overtime and pushing myself anyway because that's all I've done for six years and I can't work out how to stop.
I love the sunshine.
It's sunny every day at quarter to eight because that's when I get to sit outside before my shift starts. I get to work early. Sometimes it isn't sunny if I've been called in to cover for someone else's shift but I don't know how to tell them that I want it to be sunny without getting fired.
I'm not hired to sit in the sunshine, but that's why I go to work now. I can't sleep at night because I can hear the echoes of hurricanes over the pacific, and the gentle tickling of automated protocols sending telemetry from satellites, somewhere near the chips plugged into my spine.
I get to play chess with Turin, sometimes, and I just bought a folding couch and roll-away bed to fit under mine and three inflatable mattresses in case, please God, that my brothers might want to stay the night.
Chrissy Fuentes kissed me nearly ten years ago and nobody has ever kissed me since.
I am desperately alone.
I am terrified that anyone will find out.
I wish I could tell someone.