"Go ahead." Silvia glances at me. "They won't bite."
I walk towards the children and notice that the stench pervading the room rises from their beds.
Their faces are gaunt and waxy. The little girl has brown hair and the little boy's head is covered with black curls. They can't be more than ten or twelve years old.
There's no sound of deep sleep. There's no breath stirring the air or any sudden movements or snores.
I pull back the comforter that covers the girl. Yellow stains and bits of vegetables surround her like a halo. I gag as the smell reaches my nose. I hold her wrist quickly and feel for a pulse. There isn't one.
I cover her and go around the bed to the boy. The piles of food around his head are larger. The calf of one leg is being consumed by maggots.
I cover my mouth and my nose instinctively as tears well up in my eyes. I throw the blankets back over their little bodies.
I return to the couple as fast as I can. They are both at the counter now, standing side by side as they cut up vegetables.
"Silvia, I don't think your kids are sleeping."
She looks over at the beds with a closed smile on her mouth. It's like a line drawn across her face.
"Yes they are." She turns back to preparing her meal.
"No, I think..." I shift my weight from one foot to the other and back again. I don't want to say it. I don't want to be the one to tell them, and I don't know how to say it delicately. "I'm pretty sure they've passed away."
"No. You're confused." She doesn't take her eyes from chopping cabbage. "It's just the illness. It makes them sleep so much. They sleep like logs."
She laughs. It sounds like something is caught in her throat.
Oz continues to chop carrots. The couple have their heads down, bent over their work. As I look at them, a wave of sadness wells up from my depths. The feeling immediately exhausts me.
It's not fair and it's not right. There's no one here to help them, and I realize that they will feed their kids most of the food that I gave Oz. That they'll let themselves waste away, as long as they can hold onto the idea of their family. The family that should have been. The family that would have been.
Three deaths. Three more people I saw today who should have survived. Who would have survived, if the world was the way it should be.
The senselessness of it overwhelms me, and I can feel tears gathering in the corners of my eyes as my head spins. I blink the tears away.
I can't cry. I can't become dehydrated. I have to be strong for Austin's sake. He still relies on me.
"Look, Oz, I have to get going."
"Oh." He raises his head to look at me. "You sure you can't stay for dinner?"
"Nah, I have to get back to Austin. He's sick, too."
"Okay." He follows me as I head towards the door. "Hey, Andrea?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for helping my family. They mean everything to me, you know?"
#
I jog up the stairs two at a time as the massive building creaks and groans around me. I pass a landing in the light of my makeshift headlamp, patched together from a tiny scavenged reading light and elastic.
I see the sign above the door: a number six in yellow block lettering. That means I have two more floors to climb. My breath comes fast and I can feel my blood pumping. But I have no time to think about my own discomfort.
I know Austin waits for me upstairs. He's been shivering despite the heat of early August, under the threadbare sheets that we call blankets.
Even though he's waiting for me and for the medicine I'm carrying, I stop on the seventh floor landing. The events of the day still weigh on my mind. Three more deaths to add to the thousands that have happened since Toronto went to shit. People have been dying daily of disease, of hunger, of thirst.
And of the ARs.
Sometimes it feels like despite the Resistance, no one cares. No one cares about Silvia and Oz. No one is around to care for them. No one was there to save their children.
When Oz first told me his children were sick, I thought it wasn't the same as Austin being sick. At least it wasn't a partner that Oz could possibly lose. I was right about one thing: it is different. Unimaginably different.
I can't put myself in their shoes. I don't know what it's like to lose a child. All I know is that it is so unspeakably tragic that they can't form the thought, much less the words to comprehend it.
I start up the stairs again. When I arrive at the eighth floor landing, I push through the heavy fire door and pass the defunct washrooms.
I wonder, as I always do when I reach our floor, what kind of corporation or agency occupied the space in the years before the bots came and went. What was this building like, I wonder, before it became the home of penniless squatters?
The floor is covered in sleek wood planks and there's a massive matching reception desk at the entrance. But every scrap of loose metal has been scavenged. The walls are gone, the concrete supports exposed. The only light is the moon and starlight that comes through the outer glass walls.
I look over the dark space. Ratty cubicle walls stand in a chaotic arrangement. They stake out each family's space.
This is where Austin and I live now.
I can almost feel the heartbeats of the many sleeping forms laying on the floors between the flimsy walls. They are laying like this on every floor of the building and in so many empty buildings in the city.
This is not a house in a neighborhood, and so it is one of the only spaces that are not claimed by the anti-robotists. I hope it stays that way.
I hunch down and begin to crawl along the floor as noiselessly as I can, peering at the sleeping bodies of my neighbors as they rise and fall with breath.
The agony of being so close to Austin and not being able to run to him nearly overcomes me. I stop to gauge whether anyone can hear me. There's no sound but breathing and snoring.
I get up onto my feet. I creep past a rail thin man covered with a mixture of stained sheets and paper. A floor panel groans beneath my feet.
Cringing, I stop where I stand.
I wait and attempt to slow my beating heart and quiet my breath. A little girl far to the left turns in her sleep. She burrows her face into her father's arm. But the man beside me doesn't stir.
I lift one foot at an excruciatingly slow pace and start forward again. I turn a corner and peer inside the first cubicle. There he is: Austin.
He lies curled on his side with his back to me. He red hair has grown long and sticks out from under a thick blue toque. The rest of his body is covered in layers of thinning, holey sheets.
As I crouch beside him, I look over his body to see if he's awake. I roll him towards me by his shoulder. His eyes blink open. I press a finger to my lips in a mimed command to remain silent. I produce the small bundle containing the medication and unravel the pills as Austin looks on listlessly.
"Whatcha got there?" Asks a gruff voice from behind me.
I stop moving. I remain motionless except for my hands, which quickly wrap the pills back up.
I tuck the bundle into a fold of my ratty clothes before slowly turning towards the owner of the voice.
(Continued in Chapter 60...)
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Hey, everyone! Hope you're enjoying what was once called Book II of RoboNomics! (Started at Chapter 56). Leave me a COMMENT letting me know what you think will happen next - in Chapter 60!