Content Warnings: None
Time waited for no one, especially those with no money to afford a pause, a moment’s breath. We simply held air in our lungs, jumped, and prayed for the best. And I suppose that was the most valuable lesson I could’ve ever taught you, though in truth, it was more a lesson you’d taught me.
The speed train of the streetway hurtled along its track as Altas and I, first airborne, then tumbling to a halt, landed on the sidewalk—him on his back, limbs spread like a starfish as if he’d just woken from a nap, cigarette still clutched between his teeth with lips stretched in a manic smile; and I already on my feet in a low crouch, calloused fingers scraping against the rough, cracked cement.
When I rose, my limbs groaned as they stretched. No doubt there’d be bruises left from the impact tomorrow. Still better than travelling by seaway and oceanway, though those always gave the best view—if you could call cramped human-made floating islands crowding what used to be empty stretches of oceans and seas “the best view.” At least we were dry with streetways. And better than mountainways, caveways, and subways. With those trains, you’d never know where you might end up if you didn’t time your jump properly. We’d lost more than one friend that way.
“One day, we’ll take the airway instead,” Atlas muttered as he pushed himself up on his elbows, red glaring at their bends from skin rubbed raw.
The air trains above rumbled past like streaks of lightening leaving behind an echoing thunder.
“Can you afford a fast react parachute much less an actual airway train ticket?” I asked, sighing.
“I’m sure the black-market third-party sellers will get on top of that eventually,” Atlas said, taking a drag from his cigarette. He sat up, then ducked lazily out of a delivery drone’s flight path as it whisked by.
I reached out a hand and pulled Atlas to his feet, and together, we took our time meandering away from the track before the next train rushed past. With the city so compact, there was no need for cars—not that there’d be room for them anyway. Hovercycles, however illegal, yes, but you’d only see them around in the dead of night. For the moment, there was no fear of being ran over suddenly.
“So, what’s this plan to clear your student loans?” I prodded as we treaded down the street.
Atlas had dropped out of university three years in to travel the world and used a large chunk of his loans meant for his tuition on the endeavour. Even with his current predicament, I was quite jealous. I’d been stuck in my entry level toy designer assistantship for a good two years.
“You’ll see,” he said, flashing a smile that exposed his sharp canine.
Actually, I didn’t want to, but he’d dragged me along anyway. None of Atlas’s ideas growing up had ever been great—or good, even—and were often too wild for me to even consider. I supposed that was why I wasn’t surprised when he told me with a sigh, as if he’d just taken on the world’s greatest burden:
“They’re offering rent money and additional living expenses, eighteen years if you take on a newborn, less if they’re a bit older, until a kid’s reached adulthood—as long as they’re still alive.” That was when I realized where we were heading: the Child Assignment Center.
He made it sound as though he might kill the kid before then, whether by accident or on purpose. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know. Though the Atlas I knew was irresponsible, yes, he wasn’t cruel. At least I didn’t think so. Not at the time.
Altas blew out smoke, gestured to the center rapidly approaching in the distance.
I didn’t know how to respond. Yelling at him was not an option. It wouldn’t make a difference. Once Atlas had made up his mind, there was no changing it. So instead, I said, “Seems like they’ve gotten quite lax on the background checks.”
Atlas took his cig out of his mouth with two fingers, waved the same arm around, smoke whirling. “Declining population and all. Not enough parents and too many unparents. Converting takes too long—the training and whatnot for Perfect Parents. Make more humans, deal with how they turn out after.”
He made parenthood sound like such an easy, careless thing. And perhaps, to him, it was. But both you and I know that’s not the case.
“Isn’t that how we were made, after all?” The chuckle that left Atlas’s lips was cold and humourless. “And we turned out okay, right?”
Okay. I wasn’t sure if our definitions for the word matched up. Even with debt, this was going too far—even for Atlas.
The Child Assignment Center was located in the nicer part of the city—a tower made entirely of blue glass that looked far too corporate, with children on strollers that pushed themselves milling about below, in both the shadow it cast and the dull skylight it sometimes reflected. And sometimes, these strollers also carried parents on hovering platforms attached to the back. The handles were just there for aesthetic purposes. A waste if you ask me.
A pair of parents stopped at a shuttered storefront and picked up a bib their child dropped. Another pair walked across the street, wearing sunglasses even though there was no sun. A third pair whispered to one another while their child, who walked between them, strained to listen with eyes narrowed. I wondered how many of them were truly happy, and how many of them were pretending, only to have their smiles fall as soon as they returned home and closed their expensive wooden doors behind them.
“You gonna get one? Heard money’s tight,” Atlas asked, peeking at me from the corner of his eye. It was. It really was.
He was on his second cigarette—since getting off the train. Surely this additional expense couldn’t be helping his loan situation, but I couldn’t blame him either. A habit his parents left him with; a habit he’d tried countless times to break.
“When isn’t it?” I said. “But … you know children are expensive … right?” I eyed the gold trimming on several strollers we’d passed, the formula clutched between plump, well-fed fingers that likely cost more than several of my meals put together. The cost of a kidney—an exaggeration, but maybe not for long.
Atlas paid no attention, shrugged. “They have bonuses. Depending on how well you do with the child. If anything, I can enroll them into the Perfect Parents program. Can even apply for the waitlist straight away.”
“So … getting rid of them as soon as you’re done with them.” I thought Atlas of all people would know better than do something of such nature, given both our pasts with parents who acted more like unparents than unparents themselves, and yet—
“City gov’s said they need more people. Didn’t say how they needed them. Plus, they really just need people to watch the kids until PP frees up space, no?”
“You’re terrible.”
So was I. Yet even I could acknowledge the irony of my own words. My face probably revealed my thoughts exactly, because Atlas didn’t retort as he usually would and instead waved away my insult with an indifferent scoff.
I wondered how much in the negatives did his bank account sit and if it would make a difference if I knew.
Stepping inside the Child Assignment Center was not when I first met you, nor was it when Atlas and I stood staring through a one-way glass at newborns nestled within incubators, looking too inanimate, too perfect and doll-like, except for the barely visible rise and fall of their chests like birds gliding in the wind outside of the city.
Each kid looked like every other kid really, at least that was what I’d thought. Now, I wondered what you would’ve looked like resting as a newborn in one of the pods, if you’d look just like any other, if I’d recognize you. After all, I’d only later discovered, and it’s still strange to think about now, that within you is a part of me. And within you there’s Atlas—a portion of our sold DNA coming back in the form of flesh and blood I never thought I’d ever get to meet—
Remember that time I took you to the hospital? Remember how you gave me permission to sign on your behalf?
I didn’t remember any of it after the caveway accident Atlas and I found ourselves in. I suppose that was when he’d sold my DNA even though it wasn’t his to sell. All I got was a fancy meal in exchange and a perfused apology for thinking it was a good idea to teach me how to train jump off a caveway train for my first time and that the money he got from selling our DNA was
“lifesaving.” Any responsible parent wouldn’t have done something like that, and though he wasn’t my parent, he was the closest thing to it, even if we’re only two years apart in age.
This reminds me, I should really change my permissions and emergency contact/decision maker, but hospitals are the bane of my existence. No good memories take place there. I’m surprised Atlas hadn’t killed me off and taken my meagre savings at this point. Sometimes, I don’t give him enough credit, and sometimes, I give him far too much. With you, it was definitely the latter.
I thought he’d request for a newborn—more years, more money, and all that. But he didn’t. You were already ten years old and stood just below my chest, just above Atlas’s waist, when the nurse brought you out. The part weary, part cautious, and entirely defiant expression on your face reminded me of when I was a kid.
“Congratulations, you’re a family,” was the first thing the nurse said when she nudged you forward with a false smile that suggested she was more than glad to get rid of another child crowding the center, a smile that suggested she’d rather be working anywhere else, a smile that revealed that she probably couldn’t find work that paid nearly as well elsewhere.
I looked to Atlas, who was strategically avoiding my accusing glare by beckoning you forward the same way a kidnapper might do to a child at the park, with a glint that screamed dollar signs in his eyes. I grabbed at his sleeve. “Excuse me— you’re shi—”
“Mind the language! There’s a kid in the room!” He wagged a finger at me as though I was the one who needed the discipline.
I continued to stare at Atlas, incredulous. I should have known that was why he brought me to the center. The bast—
“Congratulations, darling,” he says. “You’re a parent!”
“F—”
Atlas threw a hand over my mouth with his palm pressed tight, preventing me from attacking him with a bite.
I willed the speechless rage into my eyes, to burn the side of his skull. The only thing he said without looking in my direction again was, “I’m selfish, but I’m not that selfish. Past the terrible twos. Shouldn’t have too much trouble now with the crying at night, eh? Maybe some bedtime stories though. I’ll give you an extra cut monthly to get a book or two.”
The very fact that he had plans to take all the money for himself and offer me a meagre tip for my troubles which really should have been his troubles—
Atlas was rarely in the city, so I had wondered how he was going to travel with a kid in tow. I didn’t know at the time that I was his plan, though I really should’ve. A couple of years after we’d first met, he’d pinned a theft on me, even though he came to bail, sneak, really, me out of the city security station. That was about as much responsibility as he’d hold himself accountable for. And he wouldn’t have done so if I wasn’t still holding onto the thing he stole—a small chip for a game he planned on selling by marking up its original price five times.
As to how Atlas was going to justify the rent money, I’d no clue, because he’d lived in a tent—that we shared, at least whenever he was actually in—near the streetway station at the last stop near the edge of the city.
But now we know he’d intended to use it for his travel accommodations, as you and I stood in front of the empty tent, hand in hand, after leaving the Child Assignment Center, after Atlas said he’d head out first to grab a new pack of cigarettes before meeting us back here.
I remember the first time Atlas ever asked if I would ever become a parent, I never thought my answer would ever change.
“I’m barely grown myself. I still need watering. I hate sunshine. I need to be lamped,” was my response.
Atlas sputtered with laughter. “Good thing we live in such a sunny place, huh?”
He held up a hand to shield his eyes from nothing but the dreary cloudiness above. In the city, it was hard to believe we hadn’t shrivelled from the lack of sun. Pasty skin, pruning under eyes, gazes dull, aimless, wandering always not to what sat in front of us but what was far, far away—futures we couldn’t see and away from pasts we couldn’t forget.
“Don’t worry, we can grow together,” he said as he took my hand. But both of us now know how easy those words came to him, and how easy it was for him to let go and forget within the span of a single, shallow breath.
Before we’d gone back to Atlas’s tent at the end of the seaway station, we’d first stopped by the Perfect Parents Center.
In concept, it was a rather ambitious but highly desired program—sets of specialized parents curated for each stage of a child’s life, allotted to Infancy, Toddler, Early Childhood, Middle Childhood, and Adolescence. Though it did mean switching children every few years, and switching parents, so from each set of parents the children would learn something different, have care that catered to their particular temperament and developmental needs. But there weren’t, aren’t, enough such parents for the number of children, and for those unparents looking to benefit from the gov’s initiative … what they don’t tell these new parents is the way children require stability, routine, and that this is the very thing that the parents themselves must sacrifice to provide it for the sake of the child.
Parasite was what my parents called me, even if it wasn’t aloud. I could tell by the way they glared at me under hooded eyes, from the corners, downwards as though I were a bug meant to be trodden on. And I wondered, what would have happened if my name had been moved off the waitlist first, before they’d the chance to abandon me, if I’d gotten to be with the carefully curated parents for each stage of childhood as part of the Perfect Parents program. To be in a place where everyone was the same, raised to the same, to be the same, paths only diverging at the age of eighteen. Would that have been better?
When the receptionist passed me the tablet to fill out the waitlist forms, you and I sat together in the waiting area in silence while my fingers glided across the screen. That was when I realized I didn’t know your name, and I didn’t know if I should ask, or would it be too awkward, even though the whole situation already was.
“Sail,” you said without me asking, as if you picked up on my pause, my hesitation in filing out the name field.
“Sail,” I repeated with an affirming nod, then muttered a thanks under my breath, cheeks warming. I wondered who named you—if it was the nurses at the Child Assignment Center, a random name generator, or maybe it was Atlas. Then, I thought of my own name—one I changed, and changed, and changed again, until I abandoned it altogether.
Before I pressed “submit,” I wondered what my parents thought as they underwent the same process.
If I handed you to Perfect Parents, would that protect your future? Would you remember me? Did I want you to remember me? I wondered what my choice would have been if I was choosing for myself, and how it was different now that I was choosing for someone else.
If you asked me who I would have chosen, I would have told you that it was not the parent who treated me best, who gave me what I wanted, who were perfect themselves, but the ones who would be there when I needed them the most. And if you asked me whether I would desire to become a parent one day, and what kind of parent might I wished to be, I couldn’t tell you the answer. I am flawed. Less than ideal in the eye of society. And yet—
Altas had once said: A mild life makes for mild love, and an emotional rollercoaster makes for bonds much stronger, because they are ones that have often been broken, patched together, restitched again and again tirelessly. And when we look back, we will see the mosaic we have created rather than the peeking seams left bare for all to see of dried blood from hearts that bled and salt from dried tears of minds that wept, and scars from pried skins we were always desperate to remove, step out of, discard like seasonal clothing, like age.
But Atlas was gone.
I pressed submit.
Somehow, we left Perfect Parents together, your small hand wrapped around my pinky, with no clue when or if you’d be matched up with new parents. Would it be selfish of me to keep you? Would it be selfish of me to give you away when I knew you could do better elsewhere? Would it be selfish of me to make this choice for you when you really should be making it yourself? Did you even know what it meant yet, to have a choice?
What I did know was I didn’t want you to end up like me.
You looked up at me, my reflection gazing back held so preciously in your eyes, and there was also something else: fear.
You sat with your back towards the entrance of the tent, towards me, staring out the flap at the rear of the tent towards the shrinking sea, covering your ears from the noise of the seaway trains passing across their tracks once every minute. Obviously, you weren’t used to the blaring sounds, having been sheltered in the Child Assignment Center. I both envied you and didn’t.
When the next seaway train hurtled by, your figure nestled in front of it reminded me of me when I was your age, standing by the opening of the train, with both my parents next to me for the last time, before they plunged into the waters without me, saying that they would be back. But of course, they never did return, and every time I spotted the shadows of fish in the water, I would imagine it was them in the distance, swimming towards me. I could’ve followed. Should’ve. Maybe. But I knew they didn’t want me to, or else they would’ve taken me with them.
So, I didn’t.
I got off at the last station because that was when the train had to stop, and I could walk off instead of jumping off.
That was where I met Atlas. And the first thing he’d ever said to me was something I’d never forget. I suppose that was why I always forgave him for all his transgressions, no matter the severity, because somehow, he was always there to save me when I needed him. And for me, that was enough.
The most important thing is not what you have done, but what you will do next. The most important thing is not who you have been, but who you will become.
His words were far too mature for a twelve-year-old, though perhaps not one who’d gone through as much as he had, for someone who had been living on his own since who knows when, though certainly for how immature he’d become over the years. Or perhaps not immature, but careless. But in this city, sometimes that was what you needed to survive.
It was unfair. I get it. I really do. That you got stuck with me.
On the third day of our shared silence, you pushed away the freeze-dried jerky I offered you, yet you were careful not to knock the package over and waste the food by dirtying it. And it seemed, although you’d been living in the center, you were already disillusioned with the world—grumpy and paranoid, cautious with your knees drawn and held tightly encircled by your small arms, an indent firmly held between the brows. Opposite to how Atlas was like as a child—uncaring of the way he had been abandoned. You’d never been abandoned, and yet, it felt as though you’d already understood what it must be like, as though you’d already had been. And I wondered if it was me that made you feel this way.
“I’m not hungry,” you said.
You were right. You weren’t. Not for the jerky anyhow. The same way I’d munch on anything I could get my hands on without tasting a single thing, without getting any fuller.
My phone buzzed, and when I pulled it out, the screen flashed a notification. From Perfect Parents. A miraculous opened spot. I turned to you, surprised to see that your fingers were edging towards the jerky, fingering its edges with the intention to eat it while I wasn’t looking. You fidgeted, halted, when you noticed my curious gaze.
I asked, “What would you like?”
You turned to frown, fingers darting away to hide your intentions. “I’m not—” Then paused when you came face to face with the screen I held up, a notification for a Perfect Parent placement in bright neon letters accompanied by a bold, flashing “CONGRATULATIONS,” animated confetti and fireworks framing the letters.
I shook my head, shifted in my position sitting crossed-legged so we sat directly face to face. “Not food.”
I didn’t have a choice, but I was glad that you did.
The indent between your brows smoothed out for a moment. Then, you looked away. This was the first time you seemed your age. The first time that you allowed your walls to drop for a moment for the past three days. Or maybe, it was the first time I thought to reach out when I realized Atlas wasn’t coming back. Not for a long while, if ever.
You gave me an answer that avoided my question. “A house,” you said.
I pointed to the large mansions. The skyscrapers. “Those?” I asked. I might have had such dreams once.
You shook your head. Tried again. “A home.”
And so, I made you one, a small model I designed at my company, something I wanted to gift Atlas as a joke but never had the chance to and had forgotten about. I removed the jerky from the aluminum foil and placed it in your hand much to your confusion, then creased the foil, folded along the edges, until it took the shape of a small origami tent before I placed it atop the jerky you still held out, palm up, and I saw for the first time the way your face lit up, the first time you’d gotten to be the child that neither Atlas nor I had the chance to be.
We were on the seaway train, heading towards the Perfect Parents Center. Next to me, you stared out into the surrounding waters. I told you my story—one I’d never even told Atlas. About my parents. About their shadow. About them jumping. About me remaining.
“Did they ever come back?”
“They didn’t.”
Our feet dangled out the train cart—mine stiff and still, yours kicking as though running through the air.
I wondered if you’d choose to jump, and I wondered if you’d trust me to follow. Or if I went first, would you trust me to return?
My phone vibrated again with the unanswered notification from Perfect Parents. Both you and I stared at it as I pulled the screen out. My finger hovered over each choice, accept, decline. The holographic selection screen pulsed with halos, syncing with the rhythm of my heart, vibrating against my skin, a periodic hum like breaths inhaled and exhaled, a constant yawn.
“What would you like?” you asked the same question I asked you before, and to my surprise, and perhaps also to your own, you were the one who jumped first, sliding right off the edge of the train and disappearing in a plummet without a single word.
And I could have remained, just as I had back then, and left you to watch from the water as I grew smaller in the distance, until I disappeared, or maybe it was really the other way around, my fear of jumping causing me to remain still, to watch as you faded into the sea.
A hand broke through the water, another clutching onto that small aluminium foil tent, glinting even though there was no sun, floating atop the waves, a home adrift before it sunk, disappearing once more under the waves, then, bobbing, a lifeline.
I watched you became a shadow under the water, until I couldn’t tell if it was you, or my parents, or Atlas, and then, I, too, plunged, and I followed—
