Like me, she had migrated to other cities to extend her search, and it was in Arrecife that she had been strolling along the beach front and noticed the Radio Lanzarote building. She had broken in and to her delight had found working equipment, and with a bit of practice had learned how to operate the CB radio that was in situ.
I marveled at her resourcefulness. As a 19 year old I could barely tie my shoelaces. With my background in radio hacking I wondered how anybody with no training could possibly learn their way around the myriad dials and broadcasting foibles of a standard system inside a radio station. Yet she had somehow managed it, through sheer tenacity and will, and had returned each day to check if anyone was broadcasting.
I marvelled again at the incredible string of coincidences that has brought us together.
What if she hadn’t found the radio station?
What if I hadn’t found the outpost?
What were the odds that we would both hit upon the same idea, and how even greater were they that we would both be transmitting/listening at exactly the same time?
The supernatural element of it made me wonder yet again if we hadn’t somehow been coerced into our behaviour. If somehow we had been subconsciously influenced or pushed towards the respectable broadcasting stations just to make it more interesting for whoever was watching or controlling this whole absurd game.
After a couple of weeks of waiting she had been browsing through the channels on her CB when she had stumbled across my recorded message, and the rest was history. She had somehow managed to translate my message, as weak as it had been received, and after waiting two days for me to come to Arrecife she had set off, on foot, to find the outpost I had mentioned in search of me.
That’s why she hadn’t been in Arrecife when I’d first arrived!
She was here, and I was here. But despite our best efforts it seemed we could shed no more light on the matter than that. I wanted to be able to solve this mystery for her as well as myself. I felt an almost paternal concern for her wellbeing, most probably predicated on her astounding vitality, like the first flush of womanhood in a very young girl. It seemed inconceivable that anything could possibly be wrong with this marvel of human vivacity. Her limbs were long and lithe and supple and white, and her hair was the darkest black I had ever seen, almost blue it was so black. Her skin was flawless, her feet as dainty as a princess, her eyes a dark brown that swirled with strokes of honey and cream. She was mesmerising, and the more she spoke the more I felt drawn to her. It was an extraordinary feeling, a mix of wantonness and protection that I struggled to unite within myself. But what occurred to me next put paid to any notion of sexual attraction, and awoke in me a primal instinct merely to ensure her survival.
“Akari,” I said with rising concern, “if you’ve been here for over a month, how much longer have you got left? What is your percentage reading?”
Despite the language barrier she seemed to understand exactly what I was asking, as if she had been expecting the question all along.
With her hands shaking, making the water in her bottle appear to dance, she looked at me with something approaching guilt.
“San.”
She held up three fingers.
23%
Three percent! She only had three percent left! But what did that mean? If her life was counting down at the same rate as mine, that meant the next time she went to sleep could mean she would never wake up. The possibilities ran through my mind. What would happen to her? Would she disappear? Melt away? Or would she just drop dead in front of me?
“We have to get out of here,” I said as we made our way along the beach front. We weren’t headed anywhere in particular, but I had felt the need to get out of that hotel room and do something that might spur me into action to prevent what could be coming.
I didn’t want to think what would happen to this beautiful young girl once she hit zero.
I was holding her hand and pulling her along, changing direction every few metres, pacing around in a blind panic as I tried to make some sense of the situation.
“Please,” she begged. “No worry.”
She bowed her head and then looked at me from under her black fringe, in a gesture of acceptance. Then she said something which has stuck with me ever since. It was in flawless English, with no trace of an accent that belied her nationality.
“I am ready.”
I almost laughed in incredulity.
“You’re ready?” I cried. “For what? You don’t have the slightest idea what you are saying!”
Again she shrank away at my outburst, but I was too incredulous at her comment to try and reassure her. I just continued to babble at her in the street while she watched me calmly but from behind her defensive gaze.
“Don’t you realise that you could die when your percentage runs out?” I shouted. “Have you not considered this?”
Of course I knew very well that she had considered it. After all, she would have to be a total masochist not to have considered the prospect of her own death over the past month and I could tell that she wasn’t.
“Don’t you want to survive this?!” I continued, oblivious in the moment to the fact that she couldn’t understand me. “Well I’m sorry love, I’m not going to stand by and watch you fade away without at least trying to do something about it!”
She shook her head and smiled at me, in what I could only assume was resignation.
Think, dammit! I scolded myself. I was so consumed by her seeming acceptance of fate that I couldn’t think straight. I had no reserves left myself, but suddenly my own physical exhaustion didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered to me at that moment was trying to keep this young girl alive, as if I let her go I knew it would be the end for me as well.
Part of me couldn’t wait to see what happened when she hit zero as it would assuage my own worries. Death, at least, would be something. It was the not knowing that was the real killer. But it was a small part of me that thought that. The rest of me was desperate to ensure her survival, not entirely out of self-preservation, for I knew that if I could keep her alive it meant I could keep myself alive, but it also meant I wouldn’t have to go through what I would inevitably have to go through if she did die. At that moment I simply didn’t think I would have the strength of mind to cope with that.
Her eyes gazed at me with a mixture of concern and pity, and I was again struck by the maturity of this young woman. So what if she had accepted her fate? What right did I have to try and take that away from her? It was her life after all, and if she was ready to leave it then that was her choice surely?
No, I refused to stand by and let it happen without at least trying. But what the hell could we do? How inexorable were these flashes of percentage? Were they the be all and end all? Should we perhaps just wait and see what actually did happen when one hit zero percent? For all we knew, the whole damn thing might just perpetuate itself and she’d wake up in exactly the same hotel room with a fresh charge at 100%?
I was running all this through my mind in a kind of wild stupor and must have looked extraordinary to the poor girl. It was starting to get dark, and we needed to take action if we were to successfully stave off fatigue and not go to sleep.
“Coffee!” I said out loud, and made a gesture to a restaurant on the beach front. “You need coffee!”