Bliss
by Laura Jean Brown
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Mila Scott’s Final Log Entry
Observatory Pod Mission 8441
12 October 2653
We have about thirty minutes of oxygen left, so I am letting the scene below play out on the Vid without the usual editing before transmission. Ricky and Lucy have been fighting all morning. Just when Ricky storms out of the house, when the tension in Lucy’s face begins to ease, he comes back in, ranting about the unborn child as she waddles from hearth to table. For months he has carried on about the mouths they have to feed already, as if he had nothing to do with making the infant. I think she is wishing he would just leave her to her chores—laundry, harvest what greens and legumes are ripe in their meager plot, plod along through another day of hopelessness, only to wake from a blissful sleep the next day and go through it all again. She nudges her way past him to throw a handful of something into the endless pot of stew hanging in the oversized hearth. I wish I could tell them both to cherish every moment, to breathe deep the fresh, crisp air their planet has to offer—an atmosphere that is poison to Nolan and I. I wish we would be here to see Lucy give birth. We have watched these people, these two in particular, for so long it seems unjust to be yanked away mid-assignment. But hopefully the equipment will outlast us and the birthing will transmit to you in its entire noisy, horrifying splendor.
Nolan appears to be asleep. I don’t feel I need to disturb him to contribute to this entry. He already said all he has to say to me and he transmitted a personal message to our daughter Nora a few hours ago, as did I. I don’t imagine he has much to say to the University Council at this point, when the most important thing to do is to remain calm and breathe as lightly as possible. Last I knew he was still angry about the underfunding of this project. I might as well be honest, right? Every breath is guilt for us, that we are denying one more breath to the other. Have any of you ever felt the breath of your death tickle the back of your necks? I thought not.
One of you could be watching Lucy with me right now, as she gently caresses her swollen belly, whispering, “You will be my last. You will be loved! Don’t ever listen to your father say you aren’t wanted.” Lucy’s face is wet with tears, her bottom lip swollen from the way she chews it relentlessly, but she composes herself and goes outside, no doubt to look for food either in their small garden or growing wild. I see Lucy differently from how I did when we arrived here four months ago. Then, I saw what I expected to see, what the folk lore said about the mythical Ricky and Lucy who fought all the time, who lived with the utter inequality of a male-dominated world. We called them Lucy and Ricky as a joke, content to gaze down the lengths of our educated noses at them. The jokes made me think Lucy would be funny like she was supposed to have been in the early days of television. I expected her to sneak around comically behind Ricky’s back like in the tales, trying to make some extra money to buy things he wouldn’t buy for her. Lucy the trickster. But the inequality is where the similarity ends. This Lucy is not a caricature, but a real, breathing person. She is not a caged animal existing solely for us to observe and feel superior to. But . . . oh! Imagine! I could not fathom if I had carried Nora around on my hip all day, cooped up alone while Nolan went to work. None of you can imagine this drudgery, and I don’t know if our edited Vids convey to you just how primitive life is here on Meta 18445 in the Poleis system. For all of your criticism none of you know what a good co-parent Nolan was. He wore the empathy belt through my entire pregnancy and delivery; he took the hormones required for him to breastfeed Nora. I never gave it much thought until this project. We all raise our children together this way, right? And we don’t expect our children to die by the age of seven; we don’t have eight babies to make sure that four survive. But Lucy lives with that fear. Lucy . . . she makes me feel strange in some ways. She feels everything so strongly! And her world is so unpredictable. She is like a pot of water just on the verge of boiling over all the time. How could anyone sustain such emotional intensity?
But I was talking about Nolan. I think I am getting sleepy too. His breathing is so shallow, so controlled. Everything about him was always so controlled, right down to eating the exact amount of proteins every day and consuming the exact right amount of fluids. He couldn’t be any other way. Our lives were so stifled. I wonder why I never noticed. I wonder what it would be like to see Nolan intoxicated like we’ve seen Ricky some times when he comes home drinking from an earthenware jug, laughing and singing or sometimes so angry that all the children would run and hide under the giant bed. Nolan and I, we were always about happy mediums, like all of you are too. Can’t have any extremes now, can we? Can’t let ourselves feel anguish or even a little discomfort. There’s a pill for that. Lucy doesn’t have any pills, and she feels anguish and discomfort, but sometimes she feels extreme joy too, elation, and the first time I saw it I was baffled. I had never seen that expression on a human-like face. It was shock and surprise and utter abandon. I have never felt that expression on my own face and never saw it on Nora’s or Nolan’s or any of your faces either.
But Lucy . . . oh wait, I was talking about Nolan, wasn’t I? I am getting tired. What a good parent he was and a good partner in all things, at home and at work. He did not interfere with me, with my work. I was always my own person. He never tried to overshadow my work with his. He never tried to belittle my silly adoration of Nora. After all, what makes Nora better than anyone else’s daughter? We all have value. But sometimes when she was little, I would take her into my bed and sing to her and whisper in her ear how much I loved her. Me! I did that, and Nolan never said a word about me making her feel different from other children, or making her feel like she wanted to stand out or make others take notice of her. He indulged my one weakness, the maternal instinct. Oh, I cherished her, much like Lucy is right now cherishing her unborn, knowing that child will be hers alone and not its father’s child.
Now Lucy is cooking again, dicing a few vegetables that the children brought in, tossing them into the never-ending pot of stew hanging in the oversized hearth. Her face is all hard angles now, her hands work in brisk, choppy motion. She shoos the children back outside, wanting solitude perhaps, or maybe not wanting to look upon her offspring in light of the anger Ricky feels towards her newest. She turns too quickly and her long skirt billows, catching fire. She doesn’t notice at first. Are you seeing this? She is on fire and doesn’t notice. I hope someone else is watching. Lucy is screaming. I am so tired. Do any of you hear that screaming, the sound of real terror? A child runs in, gapes, and runs back out. Then Ricky returns. He throws himself at Lucy and together they roll across the floor, back and forth, until the flames are doused. A belated child comes in with a bucket of water, tossing it at the adults, extinguishing any last embers. All is still, and then they laugh. They are laughing! Are you watching this, you people of stone who won’t let yourselves love your children? You people who would have taken my Nora from me, for her own good, if you knew how much I loved her! They laugh until tears pour from their eyes, and then Ricky really does begin to weep, burying his face in Lucy’s breast. He realizes she could have died, and he speaks to her about what agony it would be to spend his life without her, to lose the precious child in her belly. Their weeping soon turns to kisses which lead to making love right there on the kitchen floor. Ricky is so tender, as if she is a delicate egg shell he must not break. Their sudden display of love for one another is astounding, is it not? Ricky and Lucy fight a lot, they pick at each other and bicker, they worry about food and shelter, but when they feel love, they show it with no reservation. How can the heart of a man who stomps around and yells all the time contain such passion?
But . . . I was talking about Nolan, wasn’t I? My heart is beating too fast. Or was I talking about fire? The fire of passion, the fire that destroys. Such a powerful element. People used to think that fire, water, earth and air were the four elements that made up life. We know how silly that is, with life being made of microscopic entities, but how powerful fire must have been to our ancestors! To people like Ricky and Lucy. Fire that can take away all that you love in a moment. Fire that can make you realize what you have, make you cherish and hold what you have in a tight, greedy fist. Fire, that passion burning before my eyes—that passion I have never known.
I glance over at Nolan. His eyes are closed, his breathing quick and shallow, like mine. I am panting and helpless to stop. I reach for his hand and he gives mine a gentle squeeze, but he does not look at me. See no evil. How is it that I envy Lucy, with her man of feelings and dominance, his protectiveness? Nolan protected me in his way, but I was never about to burn to death. I always fought my own battles, and it would be a horrible affront to me if he interfered. But what if he had? What if he had stormed down to the genetics lab and demanded that Dr. Sterling look again at my findings on the Branson project? What if Nolan had punched Dr. Sterling in the face for making me cry when I got home, making me weep for all the lost hours of research, for my work to be completely disregarded? If he had done that, maybe afterwards we would have made love the way Ricky and Lucy are doing now, with complete abandon. But no. That is not for us, we who are so advanced and able to control every feeling that might threaten us, so tightly controlled that we cannot love one another fully.
Ricky is stroking Lucy’s temple now, brushing the hair from her forehead. Her eyes, half closed and tilted up at the corners, match the tiny smile upon her lips. Bliss! That is what her eyes are saying. A child tears into the room, stops to stare, then runs back out. Ricky and Lucy don’t even notice. But I was talking about Nolan. I am too sleepy to talk to him. There is no need for words between us. We will die in a few minutes, after a fairly long, productive life. Perhaps a life without flavor, but productive. We gave back one child to humanity, which is more than some do. I am very tired now. I hope you get to watch Lucy giving birth. I hope one of you sees how lucky these “primitive” people are that they cherish one another.
