For Robbie
This is for a contest I enter every year, in association with a class I take in school. One of this year's topics is organ donation-the story has to be futuristic. --L
For Robbie
The doors of the bullet train slid open, and a crowd of commuters from across Russia streamed out. They came to Moscow each morning, lured by the city's booming technology industry and the temperate climate of global warming. One passenger stood out among the jeans-and-polo-shirt crowd, her elegant posture a sharp contrast to the slumped shoulders that came from hours in front of HolUnits. Different, too, was her smile. Elena was imagining the stories her brother would tell when she saw him. Robbie had gone to Social the day before, and he was always brimming over with tales of laughter after a day spent with other cyberlearners his age. How excited he would be when she told him her news! Being a principal with the Bolshoi meant not having to ride the bullet train home after a night's performances in outlying cities, meant money to pay Mrs. Krantz, the landlord, and perhaps a new PhiU for Robbie. Most of all, it meant hope, a rare commodity in the years since her parents had perished in a hovercar accident.
Elena's smile remained as she boarded the Underground for home, and blossomed into a grin when a small boy asked her hesitantly, "Are you a princess?" Years later, he would paint her, half-turned towards him, a bright jewel in the dark subway, a princess in a world of technology. "No," she laughed, "but I'm a ballerina," and slipped off into the terminal.
Elena unlocked the door of her apartment, and gasped. Mrs. Krantz stood inside, tears streaming down her wrinkled face. A pool of blood stained the chair by Robbie's HolUnit, dripping to the floor below.
"I came in, and he was on the floor. A seizure. Hit his head" She broke off, weeping.
"What hospital?"
"Yostavich."br> Elena ran."With surgery, we can save him. It will be expensive...can you..." The doctor paused. Elena shook her head. "In extraordinary cases, we sometimes, shall we say, make arrangements. There is a shortage of organ donations. If you sell your kindey..."
Extraordinary cases... Two weeks before, Robbie had come home from Social, proudly bearing his HolU, which displayed his progress report. "It says I'm 'an extraordinary boy,'" he cried happily. "I 'have the capacity to change the world.' What's capacity mean? Will you change the world with me?" Laughing, she had said yes. And now...
"Miss Karloff." The doctor sounded irritated.
Elena blinked. “I’m sorry. What was that?”
“The surgery. It is a simple procedure, a swift recovery. If you would…”
Break the law by selling her kidney or let Robbie die? .
“He asked me to change the world with him,” Elena whispered. The doctor's eyes showed no expression. She swallowed. “Will it pay for his operation?”
He smiled.
The room swam as Elena awoke from anaesthesia. A hand reached out and touched her forehead. “Hush,” a voice said.
“Robbie?” Elena croaked.
The nurse turned away. “He…didn’t make it.”
Agony clawed through Elena’s heart. “No!” she screamed, flailing. “No!” A needle pierced her skin, and everything went black.
When she awoke, Elena was in a bed surrounded by a shimmering hologram that blocked her view. A bracelet around her wrist read simply, “Admitted: March 5, 2051.” With a small beep, the automated voice of a PhiU announced her return to consciousness. A nurse, her id tag declaring, “My name is Anna!” appeared, holding a small glass. “Drink up!” she said. Elena looked at her with empty eyes. “If you don’t drink, you’ll have to go back to sleep,” Anna wheedled. Elena turned away.
The nurse bit her lip, then leaned over the hospital bed. “You must get better,” she whispered, “or they will win.” Elena looked at her, startled. Anna glanced around nervously. “Your brother was already dead when the doctor spoke to you.” Then she fled, leaving the glass behind.
With effort, Elena lifted herself up enough to grasp the glass and sip. The emptiness, the lack of purpose that had so filled her at hearing of Robbie’s death, was gone. She had been tricked, taken advantage of, all to give some nouvea riche a chance to jump ahead on a list. She could not speak out, for her own role in the sale was illegal, but she could live, she could remember what had been done to her, she could remember Robbie. And, somehow, she would dance.
Three months later, a young ballerina made her debut on the stage of the Bolshoi, dancing the lead in the new ballet “Future Pain.” The critics sighed about her beautiful feet, discussed her seeming frailty after what had been announced as sickle-cell anemia, but what caught the heart of her audience was the emotion, the feeling, indeed the pain that filled each pirouette, each arabesque. As she took her bows, the audience rose to its feet as one, weeping for the story of betrayal and agony she had so beautifully betrayed.
In the audience, a doctor from Yostavich Hospital stood and applauded. Beside him, his wife wept, tears falling on diamonds. “How sad!” she cried. “How beautiful!” Clutching the program, she reread the composer’s description of the ballet. “The sale of organs! To think such things happen even today!” She looked up at him, and gasped. “Darling, is something wrong? Are you ill?”
He refolded his program and laid it on his seat. “No, no dear. I’m fine; it was just a passing thing, nothing of importance. Shall we go?” He took her by the arm and led her out through the aisle, leaving the program behind. It ruffled open in the wind of applause, revealing the page that had so startled him. It was Elena’s picture, but her portrait was no photography studio masterpiece, no dreamy scene of elegance, but a PhiU snapshot of a young woman in pink pointe shoes lifting a small boy towards the ceiling. “For Robbie,” the caption read, “who danced on wings of air. For you, I will change the world.”
The Elvin Star:
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