Death in the Stars

I. Maximum Life Expectancy - 9-2

“Oh, not at all. Only in my heart,” answered Laurence. Frederic was puzzled.

“You can easily help on that without drugs,” she added, “if you can tell me the truth about my family before we start the training today.”

Frederic slowed down, and then stopped. The chair was still floating away driven by the force of inertia. He reached after her and turned back the chair:

“I know that you have to take a heavy burden on your shoulder. I know that you have gone through a lot of awful things, treatment and pain. But up to this moment you remembered everything fairly well. You remembered the fact that you had spoken with your family two months ago and they are all well. They only wait for you to grow strong, and then they will take you home.”

I have been here two months already…

The words echoed inside her head, they sparkled around for an implausibly long time. Frederic could have been right: she remembered the greyish Dr. Foucault, the half-chopped Eiffel-tower, the lights of Paris, the spaceport De Gaulle, the ferry, the nurse with the Latin-American features….

But all of these might have been just memories or the side effects of these new painkiller drugs, she thought.

She let herself be driven through the unfamiliar corridors. According to Frederic, she had been here before—three times a week she had an appointment with Jacqline. She could swear on her life that she had never seen her before.

But she joined in the game: she pretended as if she were an old friend, smiled to each stranger she saw. Meanwhile, she struggled to hold onto the last cliff of normality, to the last clear memory: the kind face of the Latin-American nurse. If she could see her again, she could pick up a thread, which would lead her to the real world.

*

“Oh, you didn’t lose that thread, dear Madame Bellanger,” said Dr. Foucault, whose hair had turned into grey. He was the fixed point in this shattered story, he was alive and kicking, and last but not least, a very charming and attractive man. I wish I could have my brown, waist-length hair, she thought, and some flesh below my skin. I look like an old, dusted mummy from a museum of nature and science.

The doctor looked fabulous in his leaf-green office. Countless framed degrees and diplomas covered the wall behind him. Tiny plastic spaceships and ancient wooden models of sailing vessels thronged a small self. No family picture, no pretty blonde wife from a Caribbean honeymoon, while the doctor clasped his arm around her waist…. No picture of kids on graduation ball….

He has no family. What are the women of this future waiting for?

“The treatment we’d found against the Genetic Cell Disorder, how I can say….” He stopped for a moment.

Say however you like, just tell the truth, she thought.

“So it has a little side effect,” he added. “In some rare cases, like yours, the drug can cause memory loss.” It can be partial or total loss of some engraved bits of memories.

Laurence started to dig deeply into her defected memory to compose a reasonable question from the shattered pieces of bits.

“What did I miss? What happened from my arrival yesterday until we met today?”

Dr. Foucault turned back his diary.

“It is 19th of September today. You arrived here more than 2 months ago, on the 10th of July. From that moment we had successfully treated your symptoms, and this is clearly visible in your status: you became strong enough to come to my office on your own feet for the third time.

“Excuse me,” Laurence stopped the doctor by lifting her hand. She could not believe what she heard. “This very morning I had to rely on the help of a strong gentleman to move into the floating chair. How can it be that I came into your office without any guidance? Strangely I don’t remember your office at all, it feels like I’m here for the first time.”

“No, it is not the first time,” smiled the doctor. Laurence could fall in love with him if they were not in this chaotic situation. “And if I add that we met 3 times per week when you were still in the chair that is already more than 70 times.”

Laurence stalled. She looked Speechlessly at the doctor. She felt that those remaining memories had broken into pieces and fell out through her ear to the ground.

“Look, dear Laurence,” said the doctor, moving forward and gently brushing her hand. He had a silky soft touch surrounded with a chamomile cloud. “I suggest you let go of your worries, and try to relax a bit. Try to enjoy the evidences of your recovery! Look at your hand!”

Laurence had not taken care of her hands today— astonished, she pulled her fingers from the doctor’s grip. Her skin was bright like the morning sky without a trace of dried, red rushes. She quickly checked her arm too by folding the sleeves of her robe up—the nets of burst capillaries had disappeared.

When she looked up, the doctor approached her with a mirror.

“Go and look into it! Bravely!” he said like a fairy. His eyes were like sweet chocolate bonbons.

She slowly turned the mirror and lifted it in front of her face.

She gasped…

“It is like a dream,” she could only tell this silently.

“It is really like that,” answered the doctor. Laurence could not hear what else the greyish, charming man said.

She was just staring at the face she had not seen for a long time.

*

After encountering a month of heavy work—when sometimes she had slid down the slopes of several odd memory blackouts—she was in front of the house. Laurence could barely discover the patches of the old district of Saint Germain, it had changed so exceedingly. The mental picture—what she could stick together from the crushed memories—still consisted of the garage and the porch, but in reality, they were just a dried out skeleton of wood. The old civil house had been reshaped. They’d attached a lookout terrace and parking spaces for floating cars, two of these sporty type of cars were hovering above her.

She’d asked Dr. Foucault not to notify the family about her arrival. The taxi driver had looked puzzled when she asked him to stop on the street level: nobody used the streets anymore. They are nice and clean, but empty—due to the use of floating cars. All buildings—and the life—pursued the high of the sky nowadays. There might not be a door at this level, or there is no doorbell. The fantastic Dr. Foucault gave her a communicator and programmed the number of the old house into it. He’d also told the taxi driver to stay until somebody opened the door. If there was nobody at home, he was to take Laurence back to the Hospice Center, and they would try to organize the surprise visit later on. The greyish, charming doctor liked her more and more, she thought. There might be something between them, which was more than sympathy.

She was grateful for the regained power—she ran to the door. She heatedly pushed the doorbell, thank God it was still there. Did it still work? If not, she would ask the taxi driver to lift her up to one of the terraces.

It could take some minutes to descend from up there, she thought, when she heard the fumble behind the door. Warm brown eyes appeared at the sight.

“Excuse me,” said Laurence “my name is Laurence Bellanger. I’m looking for Jean-Francois Bellanger.”

The eyes widened in surprise after a few sudden blinks, then the sight hole closed. Old manual key started to turn in the lock, and a young woman stood at the doorway.

“That Laurence Bellanger who had been flown with a Hospice Spaceship 32 years ago?”

This is it, Laurence thought, this is definitely the reality, and not another discontinuation of the mental time! She knows about me! She might be the wife of my son….

“Yes, I am,” she answered. They glanced at each other for a moment. The age gap dissolved between them into the relativity of time.

“I’m Monique, the wife of Jean-Francois. Let me invite you into the house.”

“It wasn’t a good idea to bring you down to the street level” she said, already in the lift. “It was safe at your time, but not anymore.”

“It never was,” smiled Laurence. She did not care about the forever-changing world around her. There was only one thing she could concentrate on: she would see her son and, possibly, her grandchildren.

She counted on the science. She counted on the hope that they would find the cure for her disease, and she would watch her family members grow up, happily married, having children. Her husband—Jean-Francois’s dad, the unpredictable American—had left when she was pregnant. She definitely did not count on that.

But, if everything went well, the first two whishes could turn out to be real soon.

The layout of the house had not changed a lot. She took a sentimental deep breath, and inhaled the smell of the memories from 32 years ago, which lingered below the modern, plastic walls, deep below in the layers of paints, where you can find the essence of the past.

“Have a seat. Jean-Francois has a busy day, he will be here soon. He works in a bank, where the working hours do not have much respect,” said Monique. She kept a bit of distance, which was understandable after Laurence had just fallen into her life. “A cup of coffee or tea?”

“A tea would be wonderful, dear Monique,” said Laurence. She wanted to dissolve the uncomfortable tension that came from the strange effect of time travel. She started to count again, as she did before, but the never-ending losses of memories made her count again: when she left, her son was four and a half, now he is 36 … Oh, Jesus! There are only 5 years between me and her son! It would be great if they could take this oddity easy…

She was excited to see the first reaction of her son. She’d rehearsed this meeting with her beloved son many times, had imagined the way they would hold each other. He was still her small boy despite that he had a wife and maybe children. Through the time she was away, the Hospice Center took care of him—it was included in the price of the treatment, and they had done a great job—they’d educated him and brought him up. He earned a good job, which means he did not inherit the Genetic Cell Disorder, she thought.

“He’s here. The driver of the bank just pulled beside the terrace right now,” said Monique, with a big pot of steamy tea in her hand, made from fragrant green leaves. She placed it onto the small table, pushing away a pile of magazines. “I’ll run to tell the good news,” she said and disappeared behind the terrace’s door. The curtain softly drifted away and Laurence could see the parking lights of the floating limousine. A tall, well-dressed man stepped onto the floor, waving goodbye to the driver. Monique rushed to tell the news, excitedly gesturing with her hand.

Laurence stood up with a teacup in her hand, straightened herself, and gently adjusted her hair, trying to show the best form to her son. The moment had come.

The man, who stormed into the room, had familiar features, blond hair, a nice face and smile. But something… something was not right.

“Laurence, Granny!” he embraced her tightly. “Dear Grandmother!”

Laurence did not want to escape from the forgotten hug she loved so much, although she did not understand the situation.