Ascension by Daniel Weisbeck (reading tree .txt) 📕

Rain pellets thumped against the vehicle roof. Liza stirred, slowly waking. Her car seat was laid back and stretched out into an uncomfortable cot. She sat up.

“What time is it?”

“Six in the morning,” answered her assistant.

Liza combed her fingers through her thick jet-black hair, pulling the shiny locks away from her face. Stretching, a painful crick pinged in her neck after lying in an awkward position all night. A memory of a dream she was having faded. Something about her apartment: she was anxious about cleaning it. Getting it tidy. But no matter how hard she tried, she kept finding bits out of place.

Her stomach growled. She briefly thought about ordering tea and biscuits from one of the bot-driven drone services that roamed the city streets. Then a strange realization hit her. “What’s the point of eating anymore,” she said out loud, followed by a mystified laugh. Slowly, her perplexed expression twisted into a red-cheeked rage. Idiots. They are all idiots, she screamed in her mind. Pretending life was normal – no, not just normal, but getting better! Lies. Her anger grew. The Sanctuary was not a city. It was a grave. A living gravesite for the last humans on Earth, waiting to die—an epitaph to civilization. Why would I want to stick around anyways? For what? she argued with herself. Maybe it is better to be off now than suffer another horrible epidemic.

At this very moment, the first time she admitted to herself that her death was imminent, her life flashed before her. Images raced past her mind’s eye like a whirling carousel. Colours, smells, and sounds profoundly and vividly stirred her senses as if they had only happened moments ago. Further and further backwards, she spun dizzily, witnessing her life in reverse. Until, like a shank stuck in a moving wheel, the flashbacks were brought to an abrupt halt by one memory in particular.

Liza was nine. Her parents were already dead, having caught the virus in the first wave. A fact that likely saved her life. Put in government care, she was already an institutionalized part of the Sanctuary before they turned people away and ultimately closed the city gates forever. She lived in the Dormitory with the other orphans of the pandemic. It was morning. Blue-skinned nannybots were busy waking the children and escorting them down to the cantina for breakfast. Liza was tall for a nine-year-old and was put in a room with three older girls around twelve and thirteen. Kosu, a nervous girl, thin of frame and with a languid disposition, slept in the bed next to Liza.

“Kosu?” Liza tapped her friend’s shoulder.

The girl lay still under her sheets.

“Nanny will be here soon. We need to get ready,” Liza continued.

“Why,” Kosu quietly replied, refusing to break her hypnotized stare into space.

Liza’s face crinkled. “It’s breakfast time,” she offered factually. “We always go down to breakfast now.” Her voice went up on the end as if both a statement and question at once.

A drop of water slipped out of the corner of Kosu’s eye and slid sideways down her indifferent face. “Just go without me.”

Liza remained silently watching her friend, unsure what to do or say. Kosu’s eyes suddenly came to life, grew wide, and her brow stitched together in anger. “I said, go!”

The unexpected outburst gave Liza a start and had the opposite effect desired. Now she was scared and unable to move, even if she wanted to.

Kosu bolted upright. “You always do what you are supposed to. Don't you!” she screamed in Liza's face and stormed off to the toilet.

Liza stood waiting for what seemed like an eternity in her memory. But Kosu would never come out of the washroom that morning. When Liza returned from breakfast, Kosu’s bed had been changed. Dressed in fresh sheets and a pillow, it was as if nobody had ever slept in it.

That afternoon, during Liza’s daily viral scan, she asked the male nurse about Kosu. He shook his head, making a tsk, tsk noise with his tongue against the back of his teeth and said, “It’s probably for the better.”

This was not the memory she would have hoped for at the end of her life. But it was understandable, for it was prophetic. The words: “You always do what you’re supposed to” and “It’s probably for the better” rang like bells in her head.

“I don’t want to die,” Liza suddenly confessed in a barely audible voice, sitting in her vehicle alone. The truth overwhelmed and seized her with a convulsive shiver down her spine. “Please. I don’t want to die,” she repeated louder, almost screaming at the Dignity nurse in her mind. Her eyelids welled up, and streams of tears slid down her cheeks as she began an uncontrollable sob.

Outside Liza’s vehicle, the first of the protestors returned and assembled at the clinic entrance.

After a few long minutes, when her tears were spent and her body was no longer able to hold itself up, she fell back into her seat. She thought of Henry again. His tender and heartfelt kisses. His deep voice soothing. Had they already contacted you, sweet Henry? Had they already restricted your movements just for being my friend? It was highly likely. The Government wasted no time when a citizen was tagged for Ascension. Their family and friends, and sometimes, neighbours, were notified and placed under strict lockdown until the ascension ceremony. Entire neighbourhoods had turned on those who refused to ascend.

Poor Henry. He would be waiting for her. She could hear him now. He would tell her everything would be okay. Tell her he didn't mind being in lockdown if they were together. No, she could not do that to Henry. He had his own future to worry about now.

Liza stared at the clinic doors. Unknowingly, she had pulled her fingers into tight fists pressing hard into her lap. She loosened her hands. Shook them out. Took a long deep breath, followed by a slow controlled release. I can