Transient - Complete Book One (Episodes 1 - 4) (Transient Serial) Page 4

  As he said all this, Logan stared at the oven, where the pizza was cooking and didn’t look at Rae, but she was watching him the whole time, watching his eyes and the sadness that consumed him as he spoke. When he was done he glanced at her then looked away.

  “I didn’t know.”Rae said finally.“But you didtake the cryptograph,”she urged, hoping he’d continue. It was important for her to hear his story now for some reason.

  “Yes.”

  “Weren’t you a little afraid?”

  “More than a little. It just brought up all these things I hadn’t thought about. I started thinking of my dad again, and how he’d died. I mean I always missed him afterwards, but I wasn’t thinking about it every day; I’d pushed that back into somewhere deep inside me, I guess, where I could still get to it, still remember if I wanted it, but it only hurt to think about it. So I distracted myself with other things. With life. You know, friends and video games and football and girls. Not that you’re a distraction. I’m glad you’re here. It means a lot to me that you’d sit here listening.”

  “Of course, why wouldn’t I?”

  “You didn’t want to come here, remember. You were all,‘get lost, bozo.’”

  She smiled.“I never said that.”

  “But you thought it.”

  “No, I just…I don’t know. I don’t open up to people easily. Not like you.”

  “You think I tell this story to every girl?”

  “I don’t know. From what I hear about football players...”

  “I’m not just a football player.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?”The question had an edge to it, it was almost an accusation.

  Rae shrugged.“I guess we all put people into categories…Transients, Interims, Constants. I don’t like that about myself but everyone does it, and I hate when people pigeon-hole me too, but they can’t help it. It’s short-hand. Like calling the creature evil. In Frankenstein.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that again…”Logan said smirking.

  “Oh? I thought that’s why we’re here.”

  “I wrote my paper last night. It’s done. That’s why I had my arguments ready today.”

  “The why did you say you wanted to study with me?”

  “I just wanted to hang out. It’s your birthday and I don’t really know you, but we’ve been in the same school like forever.”

  “We talk in class.”

  “About school stuff. Not about anything real.”

  Rae looked at him.“You think school stuff is fake?”

  He shrugged.“Sure. No one remembers this stuff in the real world, or cares. We have to learn this just to pass time and get through, and compare our intellectual prowess so we can be properly sorted by college administrators–the ones that make it that far - but that’s about it. In ten years, you won’t remember anything you learned. Not math. Maybe Frankenstein. If they make another Frankenstein movie, which they will, you’ll be all like,‘I read that book in school and the book was much better.’That’s a high school education for you.”

  “Don’t you want to go to college?”

  “I’m going to college.”

  “You know that for sure?”She looked at him, surprised and he shrugged.

  “I’ve already got recruiters scouting me. I know what the buzz is. I don’t know where I’ll end up, but a university at least somewhere, won’t be a problem. Unless I blow a knee or something. This will lead to a career in sales, where I can channel my competitive nature into a safe environment. What about you?”

  “Oh I’ll probably get a degree in Liberal Arts,”Rae said.“This will lead to a boring series of jobs that don’t lead to anything and fail to fulfil me creatively or financially.”

  He laughed at that then said, more seriously,“The future is what you make it. Depending…”

  She met his gaze, understanding.“So I guess you’re not dying tomorrow then.”

  He nodded.“No, I’m not dying tomorrow.”

  “You want to tell me?”

  “Sure. It’s not a secret.”

  “And?”Rae wanted to know more than she cared to admit.

  “Age 75. Natural causes. I have 58 more years left.”Logan spoke frankly about his lifespan as if it was no big deal. The way all Constants did.

  Because of course for them it was no big deal.

  Constant.

  “Natural causes. That’s a good thing, right?”

  “Who knows. I don’t particularly how I die really–or when. But I just think it’s not…it’s not fair…”He was trying to hold it in, whatever he was feeling inside, but his lips quivered when he spoke, and his voice was breaking.“Why do I get seventy-five years, and he only got less than half that?”

  Rae didn’t have an answer.

  His hand was on the table. Rae reached for it and took his fingers in hers. His palms were wet and cold. Logan didn’t look at her, but when she squeezed his hand, he squeezed back.“Does it make you feel better, coming here?”she asked, looking around the pizza place.

  “It fills me up. Wonder if cheese-clogged arteries is considered a natural cause of death?”he joked, then looked away.

  Mario came back to the room to check the oven.

  She felt Logan start to pull away, but then he stopped himself, took her hand in both of his, and looked her straight in the eyes.“Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For listening.”

  Mario called out,“Pizza time!”He slid the wooden pizza peel under the crust and set in on the counter.“Everything good?”he asked.

  Logan smiled at Rae, who was feeling genuinely happy for the first time that day.

  “Everything’s great,”he said.

  They each took a slice of pizza and Logan lifted his slice in a mock toast. "Cheers."

  Rae raised her slice, and touched his crust with hers. But when she pulled her pizza slice back, she noticed too late that the cheese toppings had fused together, and half his cheese came away with her slice. The glob of hot melted cheese fell and swung and smacked her on the back of the hand, burning it. "Ow!"

  She dropped the slice on the plate.

  Logan laughed harder than she'd ever heard him. "You okay?" he managed to say, when he caught his breath again.

  "Yeah, I'm fine." She wiped the back of her hand with a napkin. It was a little red. "I'm not hurt. It just startled me."

  "Here, let me see it."

  He took her hand in his, raised it to his lips and gave the wound a very delicate kiss. "Better?"

  "Much better."

  Man he’s charming.

  She couldn't believe she was falling for a jock, and Logan of all jocks, but the more she talked with him, the more she liked him. He always seemed so shallow at school, but now she understood that was just a front. All that charm and that great big smile and that cocky devil-may-care attitude was a mask, and behind the mask was a frightened little boy who lost his dad too young, and ate pizza alone in the best restaurant in the city because it reminded him of everything he'd lost and would never get back.

  But he was a Constant. And she was…Rae didn’t know.

  Yet.

  Careful. Don't fall too fast.

  When they both stopped laughing, she bit into her slice, handling it more carefully this time. It tasted even better than it smelled. The ricotta was yummy, but the artichoke hearts made her senses tingle.

  "Oh. My. Gosh. This is the best pizza I've ever tasted."

  "I know, right?"

  When they'd each had a slice, and washed it down with a sip from their sodas, Logan asked her, "So you mind if I ask why? About the cryptograph, I mean. Why not take it?"

  Her jovial mood instantly deflated. "I guess I'm scared. Like you were. Not for the same reasons. I mean, we've been through different things. We're different people. But why give your life a deadline?"

  "It's already there. It's just a question of knowing it or not."

  "I don't want to know. I'd
like to believe every day could be my last, so I'll live it to the fullest. That's what they used to say in those old romantic comedies, the ones they made before the cryptograph was discovered. Live every day like it’s your last. There's something sort of magical about that, isn't there?"

  He shrugged. "You can still do that, even if you have your DOD. Even more so. Like in some of those films when a person finds out he's only got six months to live and suddenly every day is special. Well even if I've got till I'm 75, every day counts too doesn’t it? I can't waste that time."

  "You said 'if.'"

  "What?"

  "You said, 'even if I've got till I'm 75.' You think the test could be wrong?"

  "No, of course not,”he said quickly.

  "But it might be?"

  "But we'd know that. Every day, people die exactly when and as predicted by the cryptograph. Natural causes or accidental. I've never even heard of an exception to that. Have you?"

  "No,”Rae admitted. Unfortunately.

  "That would be a big deal. If someone was supposed to die today, and then they didn't. That would be major. It would be all over the news. But we've had this for what, almost twenty years, and it's never been wrong."

  "Eighteen years."

  "Okay, and that's what I'm saying. Longer than we’ve been alive, and it's right every time."

  "But it doesn't make sense,”she said.“They prick your finger, read your DNA and figure out your lifespan and whether your death is accidental or natural?"

  “The power of Telemores. And we know so much more about diseases now too ..."

  "Yeah, but it's not just diseases,”Rae pointed out.“Accidents and suicides—"

  “Well, those could be self-fulfilling in a way,”Logan countered.“Suicides I mean. They tell you you’re going to die of unnatural causes tonight, so you go and put a gun to your head. Did the cryptograph results make you do it, or were you going to do it anyway? Maybe you'd never even thought about it, but now you have the results and there it is. Unnatural causes. Bang."

  "I'm sure that happens…."

  "Sure, people still kill themselves, especially Transients getting‘natural causes’ ‘cos they’re scared. And they want to take that cause into their own hands. Everyone takes the cryptograph. So of course suicides happen. But it's sort of easy to explain too. A fragile mind is not just biological, it's chemical. In a way, it's in the blood. So they can predict it."

  "OK maybe.”Rae pressed her point.“Not just suicides then. What about accidents? Car accidents? A piano falls on someone's head. How can you possibly read that in DNA?"

  “You can’t,”he admitted.“Telemores only predicts natural or unnatural causes.”

  “Exactly. And that’s my point. They claim the test is accurate, but how can it be?”

  “But it always predicts unnatural death correctly. Every time there’s an accident, the authorities confirm that it happened on the same day the results predicted. In the early days, reporters interviewed the families, and they confirm it. They’d say; I told my husband not to drive today, because today was his expiration day. And then he stays home from work, and falls down the stairs and breaks his neck.”

  “But did the test say he’d die in a car accident, or did it say he’d fall down the stairs?”

  “Of course not; it just says‘unnatural,’or‘cause unknown’. But there’s always a date, at least.”

  Rae looked up interested. She’d never seen an actual cryptograph result.“What did yours say?”

  “Name, expiration date and cause of death: natural.”

  Rae tried to wrap her head around it. Everyone knew the cryptograph was accurate. The truth of that was verified every day. But it couldn’t just be DNA and telomeres.“It has to be more complicated than biology.”

  “Yep. Likely surveillance patterns and probabilities too.”

  “What do you mean?”she asked, curious.

  “Our movements are recorded on cameras everywhere, our conversations recorded on the telephone, emails cached online. Everything gets stored and processed. It started as a way for society to defend itself, and then to network, but now all that data gets mined and becomes manipulated along the way. Plugged into equations that spit out probabilities. We all live our lives, leaving data in our wake. And our lives have patterns. That plus our DNA must be enough data for the cryptograph to give accurate results. But only if everyone participates. If they don’t get your DNA there’s a gap in the system, and it could skew the results.”

  “How so?”Rae asked, taken with this theory.

  “Well,”Logan started, but left it there for a moment, thinking. He took a sip of his Coke. Then snapped his fingers.“Of course. You’re saying you don’t want to get tested, yes?”

  “And I don’t have to. It’s not the law yet. I can wait until January 1 next year. Maybe I can appeal.”

  “They won’t let you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they need your data. Listen,”he said.“Let’s imagine for a moment that you are supposed to die tomorrow of natural causes, but the computer - the central computer somewhere, whatever it is that calculates the cryptograph stuff - let’s say the computer doesn’t know you’re dead tomorrow because your telomeres haven’t been tested. So it maintains the assumption that you’re alive tomorrow because after all, you’re alive today. That’s the pattern. You have a life, you go to school, and all that, right? It’s a pattern. Now you’re sixteen—happy birthday again—and you get your driver’s license—”

  “I already have my permit,”Rae said.

  “But you could get your license today,”Logan continued.“Let’s say you’re scheduled to get your permit next week.”

  Rae had to focus to keep up with his train of thought.“But you’re saying I’m dead tomorrow.”

  “Right. But in the computer somewhere you’re scheduled to take your driver’s test. That’s in the data. And the computer runs the calculations, figures the probabilities, and the result is that you’re going to kill a pedestrian.”

  “Hey–my driving’s not that bad!”She laughed defensively.

  “Of course not. But hypothetically.”

  “Okay, I think I follow.”

  “And the computer calculates,”Logan continued,“that this pedestrian will die on the day you’re scheduled to take the test. But here’s the kicker. What the computer doesn’t realize, because you haven’t taken the cryptograph, is that in the meantime you die of say, a brain haemorrhage.”

  “So I never take the scheduled test and the never hit the pedestrian.”

  “Right, so the computer makes a bad prediction because of bad data.”

  “Garbage in, garbage out,”Rae said. The concept seemed pretty clear now.

  “Which is why,”Logan said,“the government needs every citizen to take the cryptograph.”

  “They need the data.”

  He nodded.“Without it, the system collapses.”

  Chapter 5

  After pizza they drove around town for a bit, looping through Main Street but avoiding the school, the mall and Rae’s house.

  “I don’t want to go home. Not yet.”

  “I know a place.”

  Logan drove out of town, down a stretch of highway that led to the beach.

  Rae didn’t say anything, but thought maybe he was taking her to the dunes. She’d been there before with family, but Chloe said it was a popular place for making out. The swell of the sand could hide you from the onlookers in any direction, and if you went on a school night and avoided the weekends, you’d find some privacy there. It’s where the footballers liked to take their girlfriends apparently.

  Chloe had been there lots of times with guys, or so she said.

  They arrived at the dunes about an hour before sunset. There were a few cars in the public parking lot, but Rae didn’t recognize any of them. They could have been tourists, or even kids from other schools, but they were unknown to her and that was all that mattered.

 
She felt a chill run up her spine as Logan pulled into the parking stall and cut the engine.

  She wasn’t afraid, really, but nervous. She only knew about the dunes because of Chloe; no boy had ever taken her. This year she’d only gone out with Mitchell and Kevin, and neither of them had a license or a car, so they’d always walked or taken a city bus to the mall, hanging out and watching movies. She’d kissed them both in the movie theater, but Mitchell only lasted a few weeks before she got tired of him.

  Kevin had pushed her and Rae had denied him, and then she got tired of the arguments, and so did he. Kevin had since found someone else; a girl from another school. Rae hadn’t dated all summer. She was enjoying being alone, being with friends and getting the casual and frequent attention of boys who tried to ask her out, but she always begged off, then joked about it with Jenny and the other girls.