Free Immortal Stories: Eve by Gene Doucette

able to answer.  Have you already sought treatment for your condition?”
    “For this?  I was there a few days ago.  He gave me some pills.  He said I should be better soon.”
    “So… he knew what you’ve contracted?”
    “Sure, he called it… I forget.  He did say to expect it to get worse before it gets better, but I should turn the corner by next week, if I keep up with the pills.”
    “I see.”
    There were questions she could have asked if she understood disease even a little better.  There were different kinds—viral, bacterial—and there was cancer, and surely there were other types still.  She would have liked to ask what the pills were supposed to be doing for him, and how.  But she was certain even if he knew the answer she wouldn’t understand it.
    I’ll ask the doctor instead.
    “Can you provide me with a way to contact him?”
    “Sure, I can give you his name.  So this is for a friend?”
    “Yes, exactly.  It’s for an associate of mine who was recently ill.  I was looking for advice on helping them.”
    “Be easier if you just brought the friend.”
    “Yes, I might.”
    The elf pulled out his wallet and extracted a business card.  “I always keep one or two extras with me.  You never know when you’re going to meet another one of our kind looking for a referral.”
    “Thank you,” she said, taking the card.  “And I hope you feel better soon.”
    “Thanks, I’m sure I will.”
    She sincerely hoped that was the case, because when she caught him during his coughing fit, she touched his skin. 
    It was sticky.

FIVE
    “Tell me again why we’re doing this?”
    Rick was driving.  The car they were using was borrowed from a service he subscribed to, via a process he attempted to explain but which she failed to fully grasp. 
    It seemed as if the world had developed indirect substitutes for money, which was confusing inasmuch as money was itself a substitute for goods.  A car was a very real object, but he hadn’t purchased the car, he’d bought time from the company that owned the car.  Except that was also not accurate.  He had bought a lump of time from the company, using an internet-based monetary instrument, which had a value that appeared to be unrelated to the value of a known currency, at least until the day he needed it to represent real currency, and then he could exchange it at whatever rate was current at that moment. 
    The acquisition of a lump of time struck Eve as a wholly ridiculous expenditure, as time was even less real than money, internet-based or not.  Nonetheless, he was able to take a portion of this lump of time and transfer it to the company that owned the car, which gave him use of the car for roughly the same amount of time as the lump he’d given them.  It was only approximately the same time lump, as there was something called free minutes involved, and that was when she gave up trying to understand.
    “I just want to ask him some questions.  I have never seen anything like this before.”
    “I know, but this doesn’t seem so much like just curiosity any more.  I mean, happy to do this with you, I just wanna make sure there isn’t anything you aren’t telling me, here.”
    They’d gone over this two or three times already.  It was hard for her to put to words what she was feeling, so she had only supplied him with vague responses.  The truth was she could still hear dream-Adam’s voice, now coupled to a strong notion that there was something significantly amiss outside of that dream.
    “It is more than curiosity.  That is perhaps the wrong word.”
    It was late in a weekday, six days after the elf had given her the card, and the first time the doctor—his name was Lawrence Monks—could fit them into his schedule.  She had returned to the marketplace each of those six days to see if there were any other sick non-humans to interrogate.  There weren’t, but she did see the sick elf two more times.  He didn’t look like he