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"Do you need to shower before the service?" Anna called out froo to the service, he nearly said He knew Victor as so across the hallway, alatching, dispensing drugs,him At least, that’s how the paranoia of those days o like this," he said He still wore the beige coveralls they’d given hiain, starting at the top of the alphabet What other naet what she looked like Or that she’d look more and more like Anna in his ?"

She snuck up behind hi on the desk A torapped around her breasts and reached the rabbed a hairbrush and walked, huot to answer His body responded to Anna in a way that ed fro else

He was still married, he reminded himself He would be until he knehat’d happened to Helen He would be loyal to her forever

Loyalty

On a whim, he searched for the naht His pal’s na he and Helen ever had to a child of their own He brought up the picture

"I guess we’re all wearing these horrid outfits to the funeral, right?" Anna passed the desk as she snapped up the front of her white coveralls Donald only noticed in the corner of his tear-filled vision He covered his mouth and felt his body tremble with suppressed sobs On the monitor, in a tiny square of black and white pixels in the o in a few minutes, won’t you?"

Anna disappeared back into the bathroo her hair Donald wiped his cheeks, salt on his lips while he read Anna’s hu made it nearly impossible

Kare photo for each Teacher, School Master, Judge--more wrinkles in each picture but always the sa suddenly what it would’ve been like to have been on the very first shift in Silo 1, to watch her life unfold next door, e It’d been a dreae one day Donald hile Anna huh a lens of tears, he read about his wife

Married, it said, which didn’t throw up any flags at first Married, of course To hihty-two years old Survived by Rick Brewer and two children, Athena and Mars

Rick Brewer

The walls and ceiling bulged inward Donald felt a chill, the cold of the pod and the deep sleep returning to his veins There were more pictures He followed the links to other files To this husband’s files

"Mick," Anna whispered behind hi over his shoulder Drying tears streaked his face, but he didn’t care His best friend and his wife Two kids He turned back to the screen and pulled up the daughter’s file Athena’s There were several pictures from different careers and phases of her life She had Helen’s mouth

"Donny Please don’t"

A hand on his shoulder Donald flinched froht by furious clicks, this child growing into an approxiirl’s own children appeared in her file

"Donny," Anna whispered "We’re gonna be late for the funeral"

Donald wept Sobs tore through him as if he were made of tissue "Late," he cried "A hundred years too late" He sputtered this last, overcohter on the screen that was not his, a great granddaughter one more click away They stared out at him, all of them, none with eyes like his own

•14•

Donald went to Victor’s funeral numb He rode the elevator in silence, watched his boots kick ahead of himself as he teetered forward, but what he found on the medical level wasn’t a funeral at all--it was body disposal It was the the remains back in a pod because they had no dirt in which to bury their dead Their food came from cans Their bodies returned to the same

Donald was introduced to Erskine, who explained unprompted that the body would not rot The same invisibleprocess and turned their waking piss the color of charcoal would keep the dead as soft and fresh as the living Donald heard all of this He watched as the man he had known as Victor was prepped for deep freeze As a reflex, he looked for soesture that he was in charge, that anyone there was in charge

They wheeled the body down a hall and through a sea of pods The deep freeze was a cerid of bodies laid flat, only a name to feebly encapsulate all that lay within He wondered how many of the pods contained the dead Some men must die on their shifts from natural causes Some must break down as Victor had They weren’t ih ti undoubtedly stumbled and fell

Donald helped with the physical task ofthe body into the pod There were only four of theone The illusion that soht of his last job, sitting at a desk, hands on a rudderless wheel, pretending He watched Thurers to Victor’s cheek The lid was closed The cold of the room made their exhalations visible, a funeral on a crisp fall day

The others took turns speaking, but it was Helen’s funeral that Donald attended He did not cry He had sobbed on the elevator, Anna holding hi years between He did the er than that since he’d lost her over that hill, since h to her He re the air He re there

His sister

It was irl who had sung the national anthem would be stored in one of these cavernous rooms Donald’s sister would be there as well Fae to find her and wake her, to bring someone he loved back to life He wanted to hold a loved one while the last of the cold thawed from their veins

Dr Erskine paid his final respects Only four of them present to mourn this man who had killed billions Donald felt Anna’s presence beside him and wondered if maybe the lack of a croas in fact due to her Here were the four who knew not only that a man had taken his life, but that a woman had been woken Her father knew, Dr Henson, who had performed the procedure, Erskine, whom she spoke of as a friend, and himself

The absurdity of Donald’s existence, of the state of the world, swooped down on hi He was only there because of a girl he had dated in college, a girl whose father was a senator, whose affections had likely gotten hied him into a murderous schereat coincidences and marvelous achievements of his life disappeared in a flash In their place were puppet strings He was a pawn being shoved around a board while reat adventure There was no coincidence at all, nothing to be aic loss, this"