Body as Currency vs. Body as Liability Theme Analysis

I'm imagining the person who finds me. […] She does what has to be done and keeps a smile through it all, a sincere one. She helps me up onto an old wooden work-table where she's made thousands of meals for her family, cuts open my pants carefully, just enough so she can see the wound. She's all business, taking care of me. I look around. It's a farmer's kitchen, shelves lined with bottles of pickled vegetables stored for harsh weather (and still not all eaten, even now, because she's planned so well). She'll have the exact right topical to wash me up, some secret her family’s used for a hundred years. There’ll be a metal bucket full of fresh sunflowers by the sink. […] And this woman, she's so glad to see me. She's waited patiently through all these months of hunger and rain for me to crawl ashore.

It's instinct for me, the desire to go see what's been left, to put a price on every bit of it, to figure out what I can use and what I can haul away, to imagine the people who bought it all and laugh at their futility, to move in and make their world mine. But if we continue walking toward this mirage, if we change our shells even this one more time, I am sure in my blood we’ll doom ourselves to always live exactly as we have lived, inhabiting whatever corner of the world isn't nailed down, never staying anywhere long enough to make anything real. We will be the ghosts that feed off the edges of life.

The reason Juliet chose us, it turned out, is we're heterosexual. Voters are fine about ignoring her personal life, to a point. Since the various media outlets forced them to read endlessly about her night crawls, which usually involves some variation of the women we danced through to get to her, they want variety of gender. In the first month, she dressed me up in rubber and had me fuck her on the main stage of just about every flesh club in her constituency—the million-dollar landscaped one in the cities and the back-road barns in the country. […] In the old days, the candidate had to eat a lot of doughnuts to get their message through, but Juliet 's calculations about the addition of us to her entourage were correct.

It's not that long a hike, they're not that heavy, my system is fine. I load all the bundles onto my back and head us through the woods, to our community. He's following me at a petulant distance behind me, carrying nothing. I refuse to wait for him now and I'm marching through the forest, winding along the widest paths I can find. I hope he's thinking how wrong he is about my bones, but the fact is he's probably thinking about what extra food he can scam away from some of the other elders at mealtime. He is, after all, a growing boy.

The elders will force him to reveal all. Naturally, their concern for the community will be limited to my ability to perform my tasks and nothing will really slow me down, except maybe the cancer. As for me, they’ll let me go for treatment when it's convenient. For now, I'm more useful here, with all these ticking bombs inside me. And my incipient erectile dysfunction will be a welcome relief for the few of the unions I've meddled in. What if everyone's assays were run? Would that change minds? There'd be a great rush for the road, everyone aching to repair shoulders and glands. That, I suppose, is why they don't allow it.

I'd really wanted to call this place home.

I roll up the sleeves. As I pull off my boots, I see [Karuna] notice the hole in one sock. I drop my synthetic slacks and she seems to be drifting away from me. I'd feel more at ease if she, or whoever else is watching, were simply inspecting my body and not my actions. I've made it my work to eat as often as possible to stay fit. When presented with a long night in a secure environment, I do my exercises. There are scars on my hip, neck and all over my calves, but I still look scrappy enough to scare away most would be attackers. My body is symmetrical, reasonably strong and, as Karuna pointed out, still here.

They each quietly wished they'd splurged for the extra day trip to see a live one in Japan. No matter what, you want an explosion, especially when you're going to die. […]

An innocent symbol of destruction, like the sun. My doctor encourages me to meditate on the natural world. Get lost in it and find yourself, like she's selling me a three-week safari. I humor her every now and then by trying one of these exercises because she also prescribes the serious bone-curdling meds when I need them.

So I study the hill, let it tell me the earth is round, filled with elaborate, molten plumbing. All this will allegedly lead to inner reliance and, eventually, clean detachment from the body—just what the doctor ordered.

The nurse is forcing cups of antiviral water on everyone. I'm freezing all of a sudden and I motioned for her to turn up the air. Down the aisle, the group is all plugged into their viewers, watching trade data come in from all over the waking planet. I lower my voice, as if it will do any good. I'm sure at least one of them has a monitor on.

“I'm still doing tours, Dad.”

“That's a surprise.”

[…] “I work with the dying, dad. I’m helping people.”

“No explanation needed. Just glad to hear your voice. My surprise is only conceptual, that there are still tours, still sites to see. Still people to pay. But someone always has the money, right? You worked that out a long time ago, didn't you?”

It's not till we're cruising around a curve that I realize he's resting his hand on mine. We're both blistered, raw and, apparently, incensed from our respective prescriptions. For a moment, I can't tell which scarred bit of flesh is mine. This sucks. I look like the rest of them. I disengage our skin. I get out my cover up cream to smooth down the dark orange patches. Dad's going to have some words to say about this. I'll get lectures about parity of treatment. Undoubtedly, he'll reach for something he's ground together from the back of the garden. Or maybe it's simpler now. All he'll do is touch me and I'll be made well.

Suddenly I'm being carried down the steps of the bus, supported at my shoulders and my knees. Outside, I look up into my father's eyes. You've never seen a color like this, like a bucket of summer peas. I relax into it, like my doctor told me to. For a moment, I feel that space she's always talking about, like I'm holding on to this world by a string. I hold it and let it go, hold it and let it go. When I let it go, when I close my eyes, I drift, but when I open them he's looking at me with the sun behind him and I'm holding on.

Everyone supports a different limb so the skin won't tear. We all learn so much about treatment from each other.

I suddenly realized that it's better here with him than anywhere I've been. I want to apologize for my fifteenth year. I'm ready to live like this. I want to tell him that I'm going to stay and take care of him.

He inhales deeply, summoning his powers. His hands come slowly down, working from my forehead to my chin and back again, pressing a current of air tight between us. I see it rushing across my face. Slowly, he lowers his fingertips near my skin till I can feel their heat on my cheeks and then, without a sound, without the slightest incantation, he closes my eyes.