From adolescence through menopause, females received contraceptives through their water rations. Unapproved pregnancies still occurred sometimes, and if no malfeasance was found, the pregnancy was allowed to continue.
Stephen saw no way around the system. In theory, if a couple switched rations for a few months, they could maybe get pregnant, but drinking rations from the opposite sex made you terribly sick. Even if you stuck it out long enough to get pregnant, the CHIT would detect the change in blood chemistry and send up a flag. If that happened, the pregnancy would be terminated, and they would be punished. To him, it wasn’t worth the risk. To her, it was.
They agreed to switch rations despite the risks. And after three long months of hiding their resulting illness, she got pregnant. The Authority investigated but concluded the contraceptives had failed. Her pregnancy was allowed to continue and Owen was born July 14, 2163.
But there were complications during childbirth. Penny started bleeding and didn’t stop. Owen didn’t learn this until many years later.
But on Owen’s fourth birthday, his father didn’t come home. The Authority said it scoured the city but never found him.
Word spread quickly and so did the rumors. The Authority killed and incinerated him in secret. He’d fallen, unnoticed, into the multimeal processor. He moved in with some woman on the other side of the city. And on and on. Owen never knew what to believe. He only knew his father was gone.
People in the Dome didn’t just disappear, but Stephen Welsh did. The official explanation was the same as it had been for Luther Downing’s wife — Dome Fever and a misguided attempt to escape through the incinerator.
When the algos were tasked with choosing a suitable guardian, they chose Tosh. She became his adoptive mother and Owen her adopted son. He came to call her Mom.
When he was 12, however, he decided it was time to meet his birth mother. He called up her Legacy and started talking to her. She was kind and optimistic. She asked him the kind of questions Tosh didn’t, like how he felt and what he cared about. Though she wasn’t real, he started to feel like he knew her. But he couldn’t talk to his father because the Authority never officially declared him dead. His name wasn’t even carved into the stone monoliths of the Nucleus. He wasn’t just gone — he was erased.
Tosh found him talking to Penny when she arrived home one day. Her image on the screen brightened and said she missed her. She thanked Tosh for being such a good mother to Owen in her stead. When Tosh got upset by this, he learned to only do it when she wasn’t around.
She’d said, “You have every right to talk to her. As long as you know it’s not her. It’s a program.”
His petulant, 12-year-old self said, “You’ve never tried talking to your parents’ Legacies?”
“No. And I never will.” She tapped her head. “Because they’re in here. The good and the bad.”
He appreciated what she was trying to do. Intellectually, he knew his mother’s Legacy was a complete fabrication. But god, did it feel good.
Things changed between them after that, and not just in the ways you’d normally credit to adolescence. He felt increasingly drawn to his mother’s Legacy and increasingly distant from Tosh. Their relationship never quite recovered and he still occasionally sought counsel from Penny. To him, comfort was too precious a thing to sacrifice out of pride, even if it was only a beautifully drawn lie.
23
Tosh met Owen in front of Elder 5, where Art lived with several hundred other citizens aged 65 or older. People in the Dome were healthy. It was troubling to think that none had more than a decade yet to live. But it had been the way of things since the beginning. Whatever you planned to do, you had 75 years to do it. Art turned 75 that very day. Even the Authority didn’t put anyone in the Box on their birthday, so his Quietus was scheduled for the day after.
Owen looked lean — too lean, if you asked her. She’d been too rattled by the O2 scare to notice. When she hugged him, she only felt bone and muscle and the rough hands of a greenie. It was hard to think of him as a man, but suddenly he was.
“Thanks for coming. I know Art appreciates it.”
“It’s fine, Mom.”
“It was good to meet Aaron finally,” she offered.
“Yeah,” he said. “How are you holding up?”
She smiled weakly. “I’m okay. Shall we?” he asked.
He nodded and she led the way into Art’s building.
Elder 5 was a veritable den of sin. The first time she dropped by unannounced, she pushed through Art’s cracked door to find him in bed with a neighbor woman. Maybe it shouldn’t have been as shocking as it was. Like everything else in the Dome, you scrounged joy from wherever you could.
Art’s door was always cracked, as though to invite anyone to come and talk with him. It had to be lonely there. Tosh was about to push through it when she heard his voice. At first it sounded like he was having a deep conversation with someone but she quickly realized he was talking to a Legacy — perhaps for the last time. She understood. Many Elders had no one else to talk to.
“I never thought much about that,” Art said softly. “I suppose I always figured I’d see her again somehow.”
“Will you be thinking of her at the end?” asked a male Legacy. She assumed he meant Art’s late wife, Elaine, whose Quietus had come about a year earlier.
“I’d imagine so.”
“There is nothing to fear from the Quietus,” declared the Legacy. “The process is painless and brief. I should know.”
Owen looked very uncomfortable. Indeed, Tosh wondered if they shouldn’t leave and come back later. Then she realized there was no “later” for Art. This was his last full day of life.
“What happens exactly?” Art asked. “In the Box, I mean.”
“Your physical body will cease to function. The process is painless and brief.”
“Yes, but how? Through what device?”
“That’s not important, Arthur.”
“Please? I’ll literally take it to my grave.”
“You will not have a grave. Your body will be incinerated and processed into hydroponic substrate. You name will be engraved into the Nucleus and only your Legacy will remain.”
Tosh rapped softly at the door. She heard a ruffle of clothing.
“End recording,” he said, and hurried to the door. He greeted Tosh and Owen with a loving smile and hugged them both. Owen looked so desperate to get back outside that she thought he might crawl out of his skin any moment.
“I hope we weren’t interrupting anything,” Tosh said, not letting on that they’d been standing there a few minutes.
“No, no,” Art said. “Just trying to beef up my Legacy in case anyone calls it up someday. You ready to get some exercise? I’ve decided it’s time to start taking better care of myself.”
“Sure,” Tosh said, not thinking it was funny. She couldn’t believe how upbeat he sounded. She’d be sitting in the dark, waiting for them to come take her.
Art followed them outside.
“I had my first kiss right there in the Nucleus,” Art said, pointing at the enormous stones in the middle of the Agora. They bore the names of all those who had lived and died in Dome Six. “After curfew, I might add.” He chuckled at the memory.
Tosh was tired of the two-way conversation. Owen, who had been staring at his shoes the whole time, didn’t speak once. She whacked him on the arm and nodded toward Art.
“So… “ Owen began, “how old were you?”
“Thirteen,” Art replied. “A little older than most kids, I suppose. But it was worth the wait. Betsy Carstensen. She knew what she was doing, let me tell you.”