Chapter 3: Together
The three spiral closer
This week I’m sharing the last of these Terrah sections from Chapter 3. I realize that each of them is rather short, a thing I’ve found with Terrah throughout the writing process. It’s a hazard, I suppose, of writing sections in different first-person perspectives: some characters are chattier than others. Eden tends to go on a bit in her over-educated, world-weary sort of way (she’s the character most like yours truly in this respect). Cid likes to joke but also to draw things out. Terrah would like to get to the point please if you don’t mind, and is also the least in touch with her feelings; it tends to make her terse.
Part of the partitioning of sections is of course about switching narrators, but part of it is also about Scrivener, the program I’ve been working in. The sense of a scene as an index card that you can move around is empowering, but it gets strange when what was a series of scenes that alternated with other narrators ends up all in a row with the same narrator. Ultimately, I think these five sections will be one long section — or who knows, I might break it up again. You’re getting a draft, friends!
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SIX
Terrah
I guess I thought, or hoped, that running out of Daddy’s money would sober Eden up, give her some kind of come-to-Jesus moment. Maybe she’d go back to her label, do some more concerts, realize the life she had was fucking blessed. Back then I was pretty sure that not having been born in this time and place, not growing up, not having to deal with the world as it was, shit. Thought that would’ve been pretty nice. Did I want to be the pawn of some massive media corp that literally owned me and controlled everything I did? I mean yeah, nah, I got that that would suck. But I hadn’t thought much farther than how nice it’d be not to have to think about all the shit I had to think about. Eden’s situation seemed pretty good to me at the time. And of course I was my own kind of corporate pawn. We all were.
I stopped getting calls to deliver to her. I guessed she really had run out of even drug money. I had other clients. I was actually doing better without her, what with not having to hang around with her after every delivery.
Having to. Yeah, I guess it felt like that. Not like I was obligated, more like compelled. I thought it was for the best I was out of there.
I kept thinking about her, though. I wondered if a person like her went through withdrawals in the same way an organic human did. I wondered if she would just die up there in that building.
Then I wondered why I was wondering about it.
“Whatever happened to that girl?” Cid asked me one day on the way to a job. “You know, the crazy one, who always made you stick around and, uh, ‘talk’ to her after delivering her drugs?”
“Yeah…Eden,” I said, like I had to search my brain for her name. His innuendo I ignored entirely.
“Yeah. She had the hots for you or something.”
“She was a vat-grown.”
Cid was quiet for a minute. Like a full minute. I took a mental note in case I ever needed it to happen again. “Jesus,” he finally said. “That’s...weird. Like, replicated? Built from custom DNA, that sort of thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Holy shit.” He shut up again, for maybe thirty seconds. Unprecedented.
Then he spoke up, but quiet. “Vat-growns are…rare. I knew about some of them, back in the day. They built some for special military projects. NASA, too. Artificial humans, genetically built to such intense specifications that they could withstand vacuum for a time, or work on the edges of volcanoes, deep-sea missions. You know, really extreme stuff. Called it Project Tardigrade.”
It wasn’t the first time I heard Cid talk about ‘the day,’ but this felt different. Like he was starting to remember things he hadn’t thought of in a long time. Hadn’t been able to think of. Course I didn’t know that then.