Here is the winnner of our 3rd Annual Writing Contest! I hope that all of you enjoy it, and that you look forward to the audio production that is to come.

 

Worlds Apart

by Michelle Ristuccia

Biological warfare. We didn’t know the meaning of the word until the Hesh came along. The reagent they had spilled into our atmosphere nearly wiped out the entire human race in a matter of hours. What saved us was our instinct. When people started falling dead in the streets, the living cloistered themselves in their houses, locking the doors on loved ones and strangers alike. After several agonizing days of bewilderment, the survivors were able to figure out what had set them apart. Men who went out to find their wives died. Women who comforted their little boys died. Only those who had stayed alone, or stayed with their own gender, lived. Carefully, we migrated into same-gender cities, then eventually we formed same-gender planets. Embryonic science allowed us to continue the species through what had at first seemed an insurmountable tribulation.

By the time I was born, our scientists still didn’t understand exactly how it worked, and I wasn’t a scientist. All I understood were the direct consequence to my own life, and the consequence was that at age 31 I was staring at my wife through the impersonal glow of a portable screen rather than holding her in my arms. We were having a conversation that would have been foreign, frivolous, and even contemptible to our predecessors four generations earlier, but for us it was an inescapable reality.

We were discussing what company we should use to grow our child. It was our first child, and we’d spent hours debating as civilly as possible how much manufacturing should go into the embryo, and how much should be left to the natural guiding hand of fate. No matter what we chose, it would never be completely natural. It would grow in an incubator and not in my wife. Her egg and my sperm could safely join only outside of our bodies. The circumstance was despairing, but the alternative was worse. Those who gave in to their urges for physical contact with the opposite sex accomplished only the death of all involved.

I chastised myself often, reminding myself that my wife and I were not the only ones suffering through this affliction. Our enemy had long ago moved on to uncontested territories, yet our population had been decimated across the settlements, and we lived on only through our surrogate mother, science. Science, unfortunately, was expensive. The cost of having a child grown for us was staggering. In comparison, the cost of faster-than-light travel was merely daunting.

“Eve,” I sighed, putting aside our frustrating discussion, “I’m coming to see you soon.” I hadn’t been in her physical presence in fifteen years., and it was what I invariably thought about whenever we had these conversations. Talking about children was a nagging reminder that it wasn’t just the light years the separated us.

A tentative smile graced her face, like the weak light of a distant star. “I look forward to it.”

#

“Goodnight, Eve,” Adam wished me as he signed off.

I sighed and leaned back in my chair. He was worried about me, but there was nothing that I could do to reassure him. I couldn’t lie and try to tell him that I felt fine. Honesty had always been the most intimate thing we had. Yet, I didn’t want him to try to console me.

I shouldn’t need his solace. In a universe where heterosexual attractions were a dwindling minority, I had managed to find myself not only an exclusive partner, but a husband. Besides that, I had a great job, where I actually helped research what to do about this crazy situation in the first place, not to mention getting the inside scoop on our progress. And the job paid well, which meant that we could afford things like having a kid, which most people couldn’t.

What I needed was a distraction from all the mind-boggling questions that raising a kid was already bringing into my life. Adam’s visit, another privilege that my salary afforded us, would do much to assuage my anxieties, but for now, I turned to my work.

My job was to pen the press releases that explained our findings to the universe at large. By molding statistics into words more familiar to the public, I tried to answer the question that every one wanted to know: when would there be a cure? When could man and woman live together again? When would our fractured, diminishing species once again thrive?

Unfortunately I had no control over what the answer actually was. Lately it seemed like a whole lot of nothing, but I told myself that the researchers had to eliminate the wrong answers before they could get to the right ones. At least we knew more than we did even a decade ago. We knew that the agent, or agents, caused the female and male bodies to produce substances in the bodily fluids that, when combined, set off a chain reaction that poisoned all of those exposed. It didn’t take a lot to contaminate a person, pushing them over the event horizon of the black hole that was death. How any of this came to be we still weren’t sure, which was why the research wasn’t getting any where.

It was dismaying. The very article I was working on was just a polite way of saying that we still weren’t making progress. The institute had asked me to tamper down some unrealistic hopes that had been sparked by a sudden rumor. No, the chemical suppressants still were not working well enough. And even if they were, it would take years to test them, first on animals, then on humans. It would be difficult to find willing human subjects for a thing like that.

I paused as I wrote that phrase: “…difficult to find volunteers…” And why should it be, I wondered, when couples still knowingly caused their own deaths, just for a few moments of togetherness? Volunteering for research was at least more hopeful than that. I knew I would do it, should the chance arise.

Just as I was turning my attention back to my writing, Adam pinged me. “Hey!” he greeted cheerfully.

I crossed my arms over my chest and raised an eyebrow in exaggeration. “Yes, dear?”

“I can’t believe I forgot to tell you. I got tickets to Down the Rabbit Hole for our little date.”

My other eyebrow shot up to join the first. “A virtual show?”

“A live performance,” he gloated. “I’ll send you the confirmation notice they sent me, and then, will you figure out the best way for us to get there?”

I nodded, knowing that he’d only been here once, and he hadn’t exactly done a lot of walking around then. It had been for our marriage fifteen years ago, and we’d been busy cooped up in our separate apartments with the screens on most of the time. Besides, things had changed since then. “Umn, you got quarantine seats, right?”

Adam rolled his eyes. “Of course I did. I know I can’t just idle in there and hope the crowds don’t accidentally rip my suit. I got a top balcony, where we can really hear the singing.”

I grinned, feeling some of the worry leak out of me. I yawned, drained after our tense conversation about the big, scary monster called the future. “Good. See you then.”

#

Eve looked great in her quarantine suit. We’d had it custom made for her for our wedding, and the florid wide stripes down the sides still accentuated her curves. She’d probably had it altered, as I had mine, needing to accommodate the inevitable weight gain we’d both experienced over the last decade and a half, but that fact was the furthest thing from my mind. For the moment I didn’t care that we were in a bare metal room with viewing windows for our relatives, both present and not. I begrudged the privacy, but I knew from experience that without active observation, the temptation to strip ourselves for one final romp became a stray particle in a warp engine.

We embraced, and I dared to hug her tightly. The suits were made for this sort of thing, and I liked to imagine that I could feel her warmth through the sturdy, skin-tight fabric when we pressed together. At the very least, it made my temperature rise, kicking on the internal regulations built into the suit. “I love you,” I whispered urgently.

She pulled back to smile at me. “I love you, too.”

I had worried over her the past several months, but her simper made it all seem foolish. Her eyes sparked in a way that just doesn’t show through the screens, no matter how high the resolution. She was impish, and it might have embarrassed me if I had thought that my parents could see it from their windows. Then she kissed the inside of her face plate and bumped it against mine.

My knees felt weak. “I… so what now?”

Eve cleared her throat. “We’ll have lunch — separately, of course — and then I’ve arranged our transportation to the play.” The word ‘play’ cradled a delighted squeak that surprised me. Her tone immediately dropped off, less sure of itself. “And tomorrow… tomorrow we’ll sign the paper work.”

“You’ve decided?”

Eve bit her lip, glancing up at the viewing windows above us. She lowered her voice. “Adam. I can’t choose. Please… please don’t make me.”

“Are you sure? If you want a girl…” We both knew that if we had a girl, then I would be the one who could never hold her. If we had a boy, then it would be Eve who was deprived.

She shook her head. “I can’t do that to you.”

“So you do want a girl.”

“No! I mean. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem fair to choose. We’ll just let it happen the way it’s supposed to. Then, if we have another child, maybe then we’ll choose, so we can have both.”

I searched her brown eyes, wondering if, since we were leaving so much up to chance, if our child would have her brown or my hazel. There were too many questions, but this was one of the host to which I didn’t want answers. “Ok.” I breathed in her serenity. “Then it’s done.”

She squealed again, loudly this time. “Oh! I would give any thing to hug you right now! I mean, really hug you! You’re lucky I’m not crazy, or that suit would be coming right off of you!”

I laughed. “Let’s have lunch and go see a play.”

We did, and for a while it didn’t bother me that the streets were full only of women, many of them holding hands. Back home, the homosexual couples were always a caustic reminder of what we couldn’t have, and of options that simply did not satisfy. On her world, there was the added inherent panic of being in close proximity to so many of the poisonous opposite sex. Thankfully, any pangs of bitterness were tempered by her gloved hand in mine as we listened to the myriad of female singers without the every day filters of cameras and screens. For a time I could sit beside my wife and look into her eyes, even if it was through an unyielding face plate.

#

Five months later, Adam pinged me, his face puffy and red from crying.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, not understanding. Alarm prickled my skin into goosebumps. “Adam?” I managed groggily.

“Eve!” he let out in relief, though his voice caught. “When you didn’t answer, I thought… are you ok?” My look must have told him all he needed to know. “Oh my God. You haven’t heard.”

“I’ve been asleep,” I explained, though I was sure he could tell that. The alarm that had merely touched me before now sank into my veins, and I hurried to bring up my messages. There were a lot of them. Way too many.

My hands shook. I knew what it was before I even got down to the one that had started the cascade of sympathy pings, but I had to see it any way. Our baby had died. The birth had seemed such a sure thing. The company had been sending us progress pictures of the developing fetus, which had already begun to look like a tiny human. I had heard the heartbeat, seen the amazing miniature hands and feet, had imagined its fingers grasping mine.

Adam lay his head on his desk and bawled. I ached to disconnect us, to be alone, but I knew that Adam would never be able to forgive me. Instead I sat there and listened to my husband sob.

The door rang, and out of habit I got up to answer it. When Adam’s mother showed up on the view, I let her in. Later that morning, my mother joined us, and our fathers showed up at Adam’s place. There was no use trying to keep family out, not when they were the only ones who might understand. After all, they had managed, some how, to have us. They had gone through most of the same troubles. Every thing except the death of their child.

My father turned bright red with anger several times that evening as the rest of our family tried to comfort us with empty words and impotent embracing. “We’ll make them try again,” he vowed. He had never been one for idle tears.

Slowly, the plausibility of his idea soaked into me, but it brought little real hope. He was right, after a fashion. These kind of tragedies were so rare that we might be able to sue the company who had…

It didn’t matter. We might very well win, but it would be long after Adam and I were dead. Sure, it would be a gift to our families, whatever was left of them by then. They would raise the kid and probably do a damn fine job. That wasn’t enough for me.

My mind could not reconcile the fact that our baby was dead. That we might not ever have one, and that if we did, it would probably be years from now before we could raise the money to try again. I did not want to be an old woman trying to rise an infant, not when we had hoped for two children or even, in some sort of fantasy world, three or four. We had only waited so long for the first because of the money.

As my father made angry promises through the screen, my attention wandered in a desperate bid to latch onto anything else. Out of habit, I opened the envelope that had arrived from the institute that day. They liked to send me information in hard copies out of some paranoid fear that an electronic communication would be picked up by a third party, when usually what they sent me didn’t warrant the precaution. I scanned the contents, skipping over the note that said something about changing one of my yet-to-be-released articles.

As I leafed through the charts and numbers, the conversation droning around me fell away to the sound of my thudding heartbeat, as if it were part of its own small world of loss and hopelessness, and I had just been transported to a larger world of hope and recklessness.

#

At that moment she was the embodiment of bravery to me and I drank it like water under the scorching sun. It was a boon after the months of her not even looking at me when we pinged. It was understandable. I could barely look at her. I had agonized over ending Us, if it would give us a chance to heal.

Even then, in the face of her firm smile, all I could think about was our loss. Opportunities were so few, children so precious, that a single failure could very well be the end of our hopes.

But there she was, smiling in encouragement, and there I was, afraid to voice thoughts that might shatter her. I realized I should say something. I swallowed. “You’re right.” Or at least, let us believe so for a while. “We’ll figure this all out.”

That night, she showed up at the door to my apartment. I thought I must be hallucinating when I saw the familiar curves of her body under that suit, right in the shadow of my doorway.

The door opened before I even realized that my hands had moved. We both stood there a long, silent moment.

“Well, don’t just stand there!” she breathed out suddenly, stepping forward.

I stepped back in a panic, almost tripping over myself to get out of her way. If her suit tore, we would both die. I couldn’t think of what would bring her so suddenly into my presence, unannounced. We had just spoken hours before, and she hadn’t said any thing about this!

For a moment, I was convinced that I had gone insane. I almost wished it.

She keyed the door shut behind her. When she spoke, she was out of breath. “Adam! I know — I know –” She wrung her hands, her eyes searching for the words in the ceiling. “I know this is a surprise.”

The dryness in my mouth made me realize that it was hanging open. “What do you need?” I asked, unable to think of any thing else.

She stepped closer, and this time I didn’t move. “You! Adam, take this damned suit off of me!”

My fists clenched, the fingernails gouging my palms another reminder that I didn’t have a suit of my own on. “You know I can’t.”

“No! You think you can’t. I know that you can.”

Her lips were pressed together, her eyes firmly set, her poise unwavering. She held her arms above her head, inviting me in a way that neither of us had ever experienced before, but only pretended at. “If you trust me.”

My eyes suddenly felt hot and wet. “I can’t,” I croaked. For that brief instant, I hated her for making me say it.

“Adam!” her faced turned bright red, the way her father’s did sometimes. Then she drew in a breath in the inevitable manner of a pocket of warm air forcing a pocket of cooler air towards it. “I couldn’t explain over the line. I might have done something very, very illegal. But safe. I tested myself. We have the equipment at work. The suppression…”

“It works?” I finished for her, incredulous. They’d been working on suppressing the reagents since before the two of us had even been born, and the results had never been promising. It was never enough, or it never lasted long enough, or it caused horrible side effects. “I mean, it really works? Don’t fudge, Eve. If you want me to trust you, then don’t fudge.”

Eve smiled like a sunrise. “It works. Right now, my blood tests clean, so I can’t infect you. I tested it for a day at the lab, but that’s all I could manage without getting caught. That’s long enough, don’t you think? We can decontaminate afterwards, like we always do after we’ve visited someone, just in case.”

I popped my jaw open to force out another question, then stopped myself. Did it matter? And did I really want to know? Whether she’d bought it or stolen it herself, we might not have the time to find out if it worked. They could be right around the corner, and this might be the only time we ever had to take such a chance.

No, the universe would not continue to deny me this.

It surprised me that my hands didn’t shake as I discovered and undid all the loops, zippers, and buttons separating us. Even though I had seen her body many times over our fifteen years, touching it was like entering another dimension where only the two of us existed. We were not interrupted, not by angry lab coats, and not by poison in our blood, so we did what any loving couple should be able to do. We had sex.

#

I fell into an exhausted sleep. When I woke up, brief snippets of conversation with Adam came back to me, setting my mind whirling. Hopefully, whatever happened, they wouldn’t separate us just because of a little criminal activity on my part. Stealing. Transporting a hazardous substance. Violating my nondisclosure contract. I wasn’t even sure how many laws I’d broken, but maybe the hope represented by our success would overshadow all that, and I’d get off easy. Or, even better, maybe I would be pregnant. As the first pregnant woman in four generations, I’d more likely be pampered than incarcerated in a regular jail.

I reached for his line, thinking of a few people I should ping without even knowing what I would say to them. Maybe words were unnecessary. The first thing they would see would be me in bed with Adam.

I took a deep breathe before I hit the button. If my hopes failed to materialize, that was something I could live with. It had been worth even a single instance of true intimacy.

#

When I heard the door ring again, what had begun as sleepy concern heightened to a level I had only ever experienced once before, when Eve had first told me to strip her. Now I was awake. I fell out of bed, the sheets tangled around my legs.

“Adam!” Eve called in alarm from the bathroom. When she ran up to the bed, she was dressed in the business slacks and collared shirt she had worn when she first arrived. Her face relaxed in relief when she saw me standing up. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it. You just get dressed.”

“Are you crazy?” I sputtered, but shook my head even as I said it. I had already committed myself to trusting her completely in this crazy endeavor, and so far I hadn’t been killed or even arrested.

Her smirk sparkled. “Relax. I called the press.”

My search for clothes became expeditious. “And you didn’t wake me, because…?”

Eve tempered her mirth as she handed me a starched shirt from my open closet. “They got here faster than I thought.”

Dressed, I followed her purposeful stride up to the door, but it wasn’t the press that I was wondering about. I wrapped my arms around her waist from behind and slipped my hands under the hem of her shirt, lightly caressing the smooth skin of her stomach. As she leaned back against me, I tried to visualize her growing large and round with child.

Eve tilted her head back to look up at me, a confident smile gracing her features. “Ready?”

My cheeks warmed as I returned her grin. “Ready enough,” I said was I reached for the door’s control panel.

The End