While my progress is slow, I thought I would share with you the first part of Undead, my NaNoWriMo work. Bear in mind that this is without edits; that said, feedback is welcome.
“Well, I’m already kinda undead,” she said, “At least, I think I am.”
Undead. The word stung me little because she and I had been planning to transition at the same time; I was still saving for the procedure.
“What do you mean, ‘you think’?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, pouting, “I mean, Mom and Arthur, they took me to the Institute last week and, well, I don’t remember much, just that a doctor injected something in my arm and when I woke up… everything looked brighter, like when you bump up the gamma levels in Fotomark.”
“When were you planning on telling me?”
“I don’t know! Maybe never because I knew you’d freak!” She crossed her arms and glared at me, adding, “It hasn’t been easy the past few days.”
I tried to put myself in her shoes. One of the reasons we were going to go together was that she was scared to do it alone. While almost every adult now had the choice to transition, the procedure was still relatively new with only 6 Institutes in North America that were authorized to provide the service. Since the Institutes were privately funded and run, there was very little information about the proprietary procedure and few people who had completed the treatment were willing to talk to the press about it. All Susan and I knew was that it meant we wouldn’t get any older and, despite having eternal life, we wouldn’t have as much impact on our ever-more-fragile planet because we wouldn’t be eating or need heat; the Institutes were promoting it as the ultimate progression of the sustainability movement.
I sighed, realizing that she was scared, more than anything.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “Have you been sleeping?”
“No. Or at least, I don’t think so. Sometimes I kinda blackout though. I find myself still sitting in front of my computer or whatever but, like, two hours later.”
The server arrived with our meals — green and brown rations with a side of soy meat — so if Suze was undead, she was still passing for living at least. I pushed some of the brown rations around on the plate. They had an odd oily sheen. At least the soy meat looked fresh.
“What about your sister?”
“Cassie? She’s still too young. You have to be at least 16 before they will even let your parents sign for it.”
“See, that’s what I don’t get,” I said, “you and I will both be 19 before summer and then your parents wouldn’t have had to take you.”
“Arthur is NOT my father.”
“You know what I meant, Suze.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
The conversation was dropped and I focused on eating my meal. I noticed that she hadn’t eaten any of her rations and had only cut the soy meat into little cubes. I didn’t bring that up either. Instead I asked her about work.
“Work? Ugh. I never thought I would have a job that was so dull. Most of the staff have been in the office forever but I’m the young one…” Suze paused and her eyes opened wide, “…oh…. shit, Dee! Now I’m always going to be the young one!” Suze started wailing and moaning until it was all I could do to gather her up and push her toward the door as I waved my wristband across the cash desk.
We made it almost as far as her apartment before she calmed down.
“I’m sorry, Dee,” she said, “about everything. I – I should have told you right away.”
“It’s OK, Suze. Just…” I stopped myself from saying what I wanted to say, “… just hang in there. I’ll have the money to transition in about 6 weeks and then we can get back to the original plan, OK?”
She smiled, nodded, and hugged me. We walked the rest of the way to her apartment in silence. At her door we hugged again. She whispered to me, “Dee, I’m scared.”
“You can make it. Just six weeks.”
She squeezed my hand and went inside. She was right to be scared but neither of us knew it then.
“Tragedy struck in Sinaia, Romania where a young couple thought that checking into their hotel under the name Van Helsing would be a fitting way to start their Transylvanian honeymoon. Local vampires, some of whom claim to be direct decedents of Vlad the Impaler, took offense to the Van Helsing name and butchered the couple in their sleep. The Hotel manager was not available for comment. Authorities are treating this as a homicide but no arrests or further investigations are expected.”
I moved on to preparing breakfast as the smell of fresh coffee filled the room. Even with all the rations, tea and coffee were still staples in most homes though Mom was always saying, “This is not coffee, Dee. Don’t let anyone tell you this is real coffee. When I was your age coffee was rich and bitter and had some kick to it. This may as well be brown water.” She had a similar rant about the tea but she seldom went anywhere without a mug of one or the other in hand.
My mother had also been trying to talk me out of my decision to transition but I was sticking to it. I pulled the Institute flyer off the fridge again and read it while the coffee brewed. Aside from the physical benefits — no weight gain, almost no need for sleep, and no aging — there was a vague promise of better life both for the planet (the sustainability angle) and also for the undead. I read from the flyer, “After the Procedure, there will be a period of settling in. There will be changes to your physiology and as your senses adjust, parts of your brain will need to rebuild. The adjustment time varies individual to individual but the average is two months. After that time, a member of the institute will visit you in person to discuss the possible life paths you may wish to take.”
The flyer was full of happy people but there was really no indication of these new life paths. I returned the flyer to the fridge door grabbed my coffee and some toast. I flipped the channel over to personal to see how Suze was doing but there were no new messages. I shrugged and went back to the news channel, now on to celebrity news.
“Teen heartthrob Arianna recently transitioned and couldn’t be happier,” the anchor said, “Here’s what she had to say about her new outlook,” the pop star was grinning ear to ear as she babbled about how lucky she was to have been given the chance to transition early, the energy it had given her, and the new life path she’d been able to take.
Life path, there was that term again, I thought. I looked at Arianna — young, beautiful and at top of the charts; now perfectly frozen at the peak of her popularity — and felt so jealous I thought I might scream. Of course the rich and famous were transitioning with no care in the world. They could afford it. The rest of us had to scrimp and save. I switched the channel again and found a laugh-track riddled comedy show to leave running in the background while I finished getting ready for work.
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