Free The n-Body Problem by Tony Burgess Page B

me. There is warmth on my face. I am being moved quickly. The sun above, the earth below.
    I am dead.
    I try to pull my lids apart. My hands are not moving. They hang beside me, they float. My legs move in fits. Did we know this? Did we know that we don’t die up here? That we feel it? That we know it? I am miles above the earth with billions of people. I need to stay calm. I need to not go mad. I breathe again. Easy, long breath. My heart begins to slow. I need to contain this. Contain myself. Take stock.
    I have minimal sensation. Some of it, like breathing, might be memory, phantom breath. I have to retreat from my body. Leave my limbs. I have to change my thinking. I have to change what it means to be here. I am thought now. This relaxes me further. I am not going to die. I am not going to live. I am going to picture being here. My eyes are sealed shut. I start to think about whether this is an advantage, then I abandon the thought. I have no advantage. I have no disadvantage. When I relax, my eyes open. The light ravishes me. Sun fills my face and erases me. I feel like I am soaring. I have been distilled down to a tiny intense thrill. Soon, the whiteness separates into shapes. A circle. The moon. This light is the moon. Another circle. I feel myself bounce. I am happy. Nothing can hurt me. Nothing can stop this. I am laughing.
    I am in a car. Y is driving. Dixon in the passenger seat. Ahead, a narrow hilly road. I bounce again. I turn and there is Doctor Anne’s face. She says something to Dixon. I can’t hear a thing. I can’t feel a thing. A reflection of the road flashes across me. I am behind glass. I am in a glass case in the back seat of a car hurtling down a country road. I’ll smash the glass. I push both my fists out but they don’t move. I try to kick.

    My body has been wrapped. I am bound in tightly pulled linen. In a glass case. I thrash and try to roll against the glass. Doctor Anne says something again. I try to figure out if my arms are behind me or bound to my chest. I can’t find them. I am much smaller. I am in a cocoon the size of log. I stop moving. They have removed my arms and legs and encased me.
    I am alive.

underemployed.
    There are tubes hooked up to the base of the cabinet I inhabit. Doctor Anne controls if I am asleep or wake. Among other things. I am probably fed from down there. I void through something. Into something. I have just woken again and my lids are stuck together again. My eyes are not lubricating properly. The rest of me is run from below. My eyes, however, are being maintained by no one. I stop trying to open them. Last time they opened on their own. Had I cried? Was that it? I’m not sure if I can even manage crying right now. Where would I start?
    I am moving. A regular bounce. Someone is carrying me. I must be very small now. My head bobs on my neck. I’m being carried sideways. They wouldn’t kill me now, would they? I’m pretty elaborate. You don’t make elaborate things then destroy them. No. I am a trophy. I am turned upright. Then turned upside down. My eyes fly open. Y is holding me. Turn me right way around! Turn me! I can feel gurgling beneath me. Fluids are going in the wrong direction. A pair of hands land on the case. Doctor Anne. She turns me up.
    I can only hear faintly what’s going on outside. I can tell she isn’t happy. I remember those days. An orange t-shirt. Dixon’s hands. The pads on his fingers are crystal clear on the glass. They pull slightly as he takes my case. I can see people in the distance. Picnic tables. Trees. A band shell. Not Avening. Where are we? Dixon puts me down. I can see him frantically explaining something to Doctor Anne.
    Y has moved up onto the band shell and is setting up some kind of display. There is a long banner. WASTECORP ANNUAL PICNIC. I sense something close. The faces of two children close to the glass. A girl points, her finger presses. Dixon knocks her hand down. She looks up, big eyes and heavy lips.