It's quiet. The day is bright with early autumn sun but the days are getting shorter and cooler. Austin and I stand behind in an empty parking lot that's tucked between Bathurst subway station and an apartment complex covered in semi-circle balconies.
On the other side of the building is Bloor Street. There's an empty convenience store, a cheap noodle joint called the Noodle Box, and a boarded-up, dilapidated Shoppers Drugmart in the base of the building.
I stand up to my knees in the waste from the noodle restaurant. As I stand in the green, rusting dumpster I see something mottled red and yellow shining beneath the slime of rotting meat.
"Austin, look!" I plunge one hand into the rot and extract the thing.
"What is it?" He asks as I pull it free and hold it up for him to see.
It's a large Gala apple, like the ones we used to see in grocery stores. One half of it is dominated by a large brown spot of rot, but the other half is beautiful.
"It's perfect." Austin smiles and takes it from me. He turns it over in his hand. My stomach growls at the sight of it as I clamber down from the dumpster.
We take turns eating gingerly around the rot. As I nibble I remember what we'd do before we left our home, but after we lost our jobs.
We'd buy a bag of bruised apples on clearance and a giant package of instant oats. We'd add some cinnamon and sugar and have penny meals for a week.
"It's my favourite treat now," Austin had said.
I wondered, at the time, whether he was serious or just trying to make it through our hard times with a smile.
"They say this is why we have color vision, you know," Austin says, snapping me out of my daydream and back to the parking lot, the dumpster, and the half-rotten apple. He goes back to gobbling up his share of the fruit.
"Who says? Who has color vision?"
I'm thrown by his timing. We used to exchange useless information conversationally. It's something we haven't done for a while. We really haven't talked about anything but where to get our next meal for awhile.
"Just, you know...I don't know. Scientists. The news. People, I guess. We used to talk in the hospital a lot about the brain and the nervous system. How it all came to be and why. It was fruit, they said. We have color vision so we can tell the difference between unripe, ripe, and rotten. Dogs and cats don't really need that. They just need smell to know if meat is safe or not."
"Well. So ends this lesson," I say sharply. "I guess it's a good thing we can see color now."
I start to walk down the street.
"Andrea, what's wrong?" He asks my retreating form.
I stop but I don't turn around. It seems like a strange question, coming from him. I'm the one who has done something wrong. He's the one who should be short.
"It's just not helping, Austin. It won't help to remind me, constantly, of everything we've lost. I don't really want to think about old colleagues or about places that will never be the same. It doesn't matter anymore why we do the things we do or how. It just matters that we survive."
"Is that really all you want for our life?"
"Of course not," I say over my shoulder. "I want comfort. I want what we had before...a warm bed and real food. But can't you see? Things aren't the same. They'll never be the same. So maybe it's better to ignore the fact that we're missing out."
There's a long silence. I start to walk away.
"We could help," he suggests. "We could do everything we can to get the city back to the way it was."
"How?"
I spin to look at him. His face is blank as he rubs a hole in the dirt with the toe of his boot.
"Austin, no one has the energy. Everyone is fighting for themselves. I know that you can do something but you can't do everything. You're one man with an extremely specialized set of skills. And I'm the same way. We can only do a very specific set of tasks."
"But if everyone pulled together --"
"Who, everyone?" I think about how we've both been wearing the iTronics crest for four months but haven't met anyone else who wears it. "Austin, people are lost. We're lost. Most people are just trying to learn how to survive. Unless they have a reason to act for everyone's good --"
"Unless they had a leader, you mean?" He eyes me hopefully.
"I don't know," I palm my forehead. "Yeah, I guess so. Or a cause, maybe. But really there's no cause that matters when your own survival is at stake. And besides, the Anti-Robotists tried all that already, haven't they?"
He drops his eyes.
"Maybe I could be a leader."
I don't know what to say. Austin, a leader? Austin who has never led anyone beyond other doctors in a rigid medical hierarchy?
He's done exactly what his parents had expected him to do and he'd excelled at it. His only risk was lack of aptitude for that particular skill set.
He's thinking, I figure, about his organizational skills. He is not thinking of the fact that the Anti-Robotists would have to be confronted so that the city could thrive again.
"Maybe you could," I say quietly.
I inwardly hope that hunger will make him forget the idea.
(Continued in Chapter 53...)
***************************
Hey, everyone. Thanks for reading this chapter! What did you think of it?!