Sentilia

It was Saturday morning; I had nothing to do. Now and then when I got bored I’d go download some new book, but to my parent’s bafflement I wasn’t so fond of reading on a screen. So I watched transporters go by my window again. It was going to be a cloudy day, the temperature: a chilly 20°C.

I picked up the telephone; it started ringing in my hands. I didn’t get surprised anymore, although it was still odd every time it happened. I wasn’t able to see things that were going to happen, but I could feel them, since I was about eight years old. It had started after a troubling series of dreams that I barely remember. All I recall was the feeling I always had when I would wake up: a type of anxiousness mixed with fright.

I knew this wasn’t normal. Though I fought to control the urge to pick up the phone, I still wasn’t able to stop myself. It was a reflex.

My parents knew it wasn’t normal, but they just ignored it. Every time I would bring it up, they would remind me not to tell anyone else about it, and then they would change the subject. Though I had secretly tried to research any existent record of similar behaviour on our public medical database, I hadn’t found anything at all.

I answered the phone and transferred the call to the intercom; it was for my dad. When he hung up, he came to sit with me next to the window, an unfathomable expression on his broad face.

“Is something wrong, Maxine?”

My dad had always been very perceptive. That’s what I didn’t like about him. Even if I pretended everything was fine, he always knew better. We’d never talked about it, but he knew I wasn’t really happy with this life. I still thought it was best to lie to him.

“No, I’m fine. I’m just looking for something to do.”

“Well, you’ve got a couple of books you haven’t read yet. Don’t you like reading? I bet you could get yourself a new one. We haven’t passed our limit yet.”

We never went passed our limit. We never even came close to downloading or purchasing as much as we were allowed to.

“No, that’s fine dad. I think I’m just getting a little sick, I’m going to drop by the med facility later.” I tried to smile, but it wasn’t very convincing.

“Do you want me to come with you?” His face lifted.

“No, thanks, I’ll be fine.”

My father still kept babying me all the time. I hadn’t had much of a transition from being a child to being an adolescent; I had not given my parents a rough time during my puberty, like most kids do. So my parents never got the feeling that I’d grown up. They were still waiting for it to happen.

Today, I did feel sick, slightly nauseous, but it had often been used as an excuse to avoid talking about my real problem. I had never confided in my parents. To tell them that I was not fond of my “perfect” life was not something they would take very easily, since they loved their own. So I decided to shy away my feelings from them.

After breakfast, I got dressed and headed to the garage. It was located at the top of our apartment building. The transporters were all on the same floor. About 300 pin-shaped machines, some bigger, for bigger families, and others smaller, like mine, made for 2 people at the most. We each had our parking spot, and the transporters recharged themselves during the day. The solar panels covering the transporters took in the light that came in from the open ceiling.

I had to walk a while and take the elevator to get there, but on my way, I saw no one. I got to the garage: empty as well. I got to my transporter, which I tried to use the least I could because it made me dizzy, and I climbed in the front seat, telling it where to go. I lifted off and couldn’t see where I was going, the solar panels covering the whole transporter, but 5 minutes later, I was at the medical facility.

I wished it had taken more time. I had loads of time to spend today. Well, like most other days.

When I arrived in the waiting room, I was automatically scanned and checked-in. I sat down; there were two other people already sitting in the room.

The person farthest to me was a woman. She looked around 40 years old and reminded me of my mother: a square face with a short blonde bob and bright blue eyes. She was as beautiful as my mother. I had always wanted to look like her. It would have been nice to think of myself as beautiful.

But this was common nowadays. Very few children looked like their parents.

When a couple decide to become parents, they choose what the child will look like, and with genetic manipulations, the Originator—that’s what they call him—shapes us like what our parents want us to look like.

I had not been conceived. I had been created.

Mothers do not give birth. Babies are grown in a facility, which I’ve never seen. In fact, the amount of people allowed there is very limited. People seem to think this way is better for the mothers than the way they used to conceive; it’s less dangerous and less stressful.

My parents had chosen my features to be an opposite image of theirs. They didn’t want to have a child that looked like them. I could guess that much.

My dad had white, once blonde hair, a pale complexion, a small stature and deep-set grey eyes.

I, however, was olive-skinned; my dark brown hair always a mess, and the only feature I liked about myself were my green eyes. Even after I had been told since I was young that I was pretty, I still avoided looking at myself in the mirror. Without knowing why, I just disliked it.

I hunched my shoulders, and turned my head slightly to the left. The other person in the waiting room was a man. He was in his 60′s. I thought he looked really sick, like a man I once saw that was undergoing treatment for lung cancer. Normally, the nurses in the facilities are qualified enough to cure the usual, occasional viruses; a few drops of this and that do the job when we forget to take our daily pills. The pills were to prevent most sicknesses. They protected us but were sometimes not enough: that’s when we’d have to go to the med facility to get checked. When they detected something more elaborate, like cancer or heart disease, they relocated you to a bigger facility with doctors. There, they were sure to cure you: I’ve never heard of anyone dying from a health condition.

I wondered why that man sitting next to me wasn’t there yet. Maybe he wasn’t as sick as he seemed to be; in any case, our other facility wasn’t very far away, in the northern part of Arizona. Still, he should have been there already...

“Why am I so concerned?” I thought. Maybe because I’m so overly protective of everybody else.

I’ve always been so prone to protecting everyone, everything. From the people I know, to the last bit of nature we have, and the few animals that were left in this world.

The nurse called my name. She welcomed me into the treating room, which was pure white, with metal cabinets and a glass sink. A bed was pushed to the far corner of the office, and she invited me to sit on it. I obeyed, and pivoted a little too fast before loosing my balance and catching myself on the bed’s edge. My head slowly stopped spinning and I noticed a pop of colour on the far wall. It was a large painting of a forest, like they used to be. There were beautiful green trees everywhere, covered in moss; there was a small waterfall squeezed in between the trees, and a ray of sunlight passing through the foliage. It was astonishingly beautiful.

I was studying the painting while explaining my symptoms to the nurse, almost trying to burn the image in my mind, as if I would never see something like it again.

The nurse caught me staring. She said: “It’s amazing isn’t it? I collect them, the paintings of the past.”

“I’ve never really seen anything like it. Well, except at the museum, a very long time ago,” I remembered, dazzled.

“That’s where I got it. They have lots of paintings like these; they also have wooden furniture, paper pictures, and even paper books. They really have cool stuff, and you can ask for anything you like; if you’re reasonable with other downloads and demands of course. Believe it or not, they’re not so popular in general.” I was still staring at the painting, open mouthed.

“You know, you should really go to the museum, I can see that you’d really appreciate it,” she added with a chuckle.

“Well, I guess I could go take a look.” I said, trying to sound casual. I would definitely go and take a look.

The nurse gave me a drop of gold colored gel she squeezed out of a tiny bottle that had no apparent tag or description, and sent me home. It wasn’t raining when I got out of the facility, and I took it as an omen. I felt better already as I headed to the short stop I would make on my way back.