Earth Heart
I tapped my finger against the silver panel
that ran across the feedskin covering my wrist. A blue screen appeared, hanging
in midair, translucent. I flicked my fingers across it deftly, checking and
updating my assignments and messages. Being sixteen in a cyber city didn’t mean
I didn’t have to go to school. The only difference between me and teenagers in
the past was that school came to me. Two unopened files awaited my attention. I
clicked them open, pausing only to check that my feedskin wasn’t running low on
energy. One file was a report on the uses on feedskins and the other was an
essay about the importance of maintaining animal life. A useless title, I
thought. Everyone knew that there were no true animals anymore. The remaining
creatures were clones and hybrids. Neither of which survived very long. At the
most they had ten years. They were not equipped with feedskins such as ours and
they were so very weak. All they inherited were defective genes, long affected
by pollution that seeped into their veins and clogged their blood. I walked
over to the mirror that was built into my cube’s wall. A black haired waif
looked back at me, her eyes dark and questioning. Cynical, some said. But who
wouldn’t be? I lost my parents in the chaos of transporting into this new
planet when I was only three. The ship they were on exploded or so I was told.
I always believed they never even left earth. I wanted to make them proud of me
and so I became the best cybertracker in my city. I had won the cybertrackers’
race twice already despite my age. The girl in the mirror shook her head. I had
to get back to work. Dreams were useless. I had to make them real. I settled
down to the feedskin report first. The implant methods were simple. Every child
knew the steps of implanting a feedskin. I had mine done as soon as I touched
down on this strange planet that was to be my new home. It happened in a
laboratory. They gave you sedatives, made you all loose and numb, unable to
fidget even. Then they put a bubble-shaped tank over your head, closing it off
and filling it with oxygen. The next step was the tank. The ever moving cloudy
white liquid scared me. Perhaps it was the thought of drowning. Immersed
entirely in the liquid, it took twelve hours to coat a tiny human child with
feedskin and two hours more to upgrade its mind. The liquid itself comprised of
flexible plastic and nano molecules which could send signals, just like the
nerves in our own bodies. It would grow on us and in us as we grew. The
feedskin would supply us with everything we needed and more. Upgrading clinics
blossomed all over the city offering to update software implanted in our minds
and feedskins. The feedskin itself fed us, hence its name, kept us warm or
cool, depending on preference. It even acted as a personal computer, projecting
our minds and signals of outside messages. I leaned back against the smoothness
of my chair and twirled the seat round and round, making my screen flicker
unsteadily. I tapped it off. But feedskins didn’t last long and there was only
one type of it. No one had managed to invent a better one or found a way to
live without it. No one had lived past 80 either. I touched the pad next to my
cube mirror and the mirror wavered for an instant before it became totally
clear. A window. I pressed my face against the cool surface. I could see the
city now. Dim in the light of an artificial moon, tiny people in white
feedskins similar to mine walked across the streets, hurrying back to their
cubes. The chimaeras in the cube stack roof opposite mine were shadowy figures
against the night sky. It would have been beautiful, but only for those who had
never seen the world that was once ours. Ours to live in, ours to protect, ours
to destroy. I would never forget the day the world came crashing down. The
shrieking wind that tore at me as I was lifted bodily by the ship crew into the
spaceship waiting at the space harbor, the screams of the people, desperate to
live, fighting among each other, fighting against nature and against time. The
scrambling and pushing as we crowded into the ship and sat huddled in our
seats. A whole ship full of scared, bewildered children. We were the first to
be saved. We were the next generation and also their guinea pigs. Specimens for
the testing of the new technology they called a feedskin. I watched as our ship
powered up and left the earth I knew behind in a cloud of dust and debris,
fighting against the elements. The wind still screamed in my ears. I didn’t
realize that I was holding my breath. I let it out slowly and it misted on the
window. The world outside blurred. Tears spilled down my cheeks as I turned
away and got ready for bed. I knew that our pain and loss ran deeper than just our
planet. For some of us, it was a wound that would never heal.
~Rei Shiori
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