Transhuman

Transhuman

“What's your name?”

The girl couldn't have been more than seven years old. Child-like ignorance stained her face in the form of a wide, toothy grin. Her front two teeth were missing from neglect, and several other yellowing teeth were showing signs of rot. The skin stretching over her skeleton was white with a ting of greenish-pink in her dimpled cheeks. She wore a simple gown that fell only to her knees, exposing red burnt flesh. Those brown eyes of hers were beginning to haze over in blindness. “What's your name?” she repeated, bending at her knobby knees to see me at eye level.

The Sickness turned the air around the young girl sour, but all the air in the area had the same gripping feeling of death. The land had been condemned years before because of chemical radiation, and no plant, let alone a human, could survive in the toxic zone. Even the atmosphere seemed to give up on the place; the ozone had all but been destroyed, making the sun impossible to stand in without burning. Yet, people continued to live there, knowing the Sickness waited around the corner. They all knew they were going to die; everyone but the girl knew.

It was the only way to explain why the girl was out in the middle of the day when the sun was at its strongest.

Her blissful smile faltered. “Do you not have a name?” she wondered, turning her head to the side. Her hay colored hair threatened to fall out of their braids at the simple motion; the objects restraining the hair were nothing more than the shavings of a scratchy rope. There were small red marks on the back of her thin neck where the rope rubbed her skin raw. “Everyone needs a name,” she continued. “My name's Svet. Mommy says it means 'light', because I'm the light of her life,” she giggled, a bit of redness coming to her cheeks.

She shifted so her thin body was sitting next to mine. We sat inside one of the many abandoned buildings of the area. The insides were hollowed out by robbers years before, and any glass in the windows had been either destroyed by the weather or melted away by the sun. Our location was just under one of the destroyed windows, outside the reach of the damaging sun's rays.

Her large brown eyes stared into mine, and her smile returned. “Would it be alright if I named you? I see you come and sit here everyday, but I've never had the courage to come talk to you. Well, until today that is, so can I name you? I promise it will be a good one.”

“Very well,” I mumbled, staring at the girl name Svet.

“Alright. I've thought about this for awhile now, so you're going to like it. Koshka. It means cat, so it makes sense because you have cat ears,” she laughed.

I continued to simply look at her, fascinated by her innocence. “Do you know why I have cat ears, Svet?” I asked, closing my eyes and leaning my head against the cold stoned building. Hunger gnawed at my stomach while dizziness assaulted my head.

“They're cute?” she guessed.

I had to suppress a groan. The girl's ignorance was going to be the death of her before the Sickness ever had a chance. “Svet, do you know what's beyond the Gate?” The Gate towered over the area, separating it from the rest of the city. It consisted of miles high poles with electrical currents running through them every three feet. The pure electricity killed most of the Sickness that tried to leave the area, so the rest of the city didn't suffer as much. It didn't stop the occasional random cases of the flesh deteriorating disease from popping up, however. Those few souls were usually sent out of the city or killed on the spot.

Svet looked down. “Daddy's over there,” she whispered. She pulled her brunt legs to her chest, flinching as she brushed against the raw skin. “We use to live there, but one day I got sick. These scary men wearing suits came to our house and talked to Mommy and Daddy; then they told us we had to leave. When we left, Daddy wasn't with us. Mommy, she said that he didn't want to come with us because he didn't love us anymore.” Small tears pricked at her eyes. “It was a few months ago.”