The Resident (part twenty-two)

Chapter Three

Tithonians

The Grey took charge of Claudine’s information. She told, and she showed, and John went off to work. His commute at the end of their shared life was sixty miles. From 2007, he could no longer teach simple computer repair.

One school had been willing to hire him—if he would learn HTML coding and teach that. Highbar Career Academies paid instructors per session. They paid in “opportunities to earn as much as”, as opposed to firm contracts, so cared little if you arrived trained, or needed…from them…to purchase credentials. They were a subsidiary of Acervillas, the golf course people, the Oathbreach Farm overlords.

Driving, John’s mind could not process radio noise. He needed the low constant of spinning tires. He needed to watch center lines count themselves off. His wife could be nicked by a thorn, blistered on the thumb, knee-scraped by a pebble. By any of these, adulterated. Latency bloomed in her genes.

“They’re objectively gross, aren’t they, my nodules?”

She knifed her nodules away, cleaned them, bandaged them. In a day, Claudie would rip the bandage off, cause the mesh to strip the tissue, tamp on alcohol again, rebandage. The skin that grew back was not human. It was rugose, fibrously veined, green.

He told her: “I don’t see you objectively.”

Then Teconieshe brought a doctor, a Tithonian.

“You’re having difficulty with that arm? Well, I think we can restore a good portion of natural movement. However, please don’t garden.”

“I will though. Please don’t admonish me.”

The doctor had landed first in 2017, “…which was no good. It needed a special appeal through my lister, so I could try again. Because typically, they’d send another doctor, but planet sickness can’t be managed without a continuity of experience. I landed again in 1998. And so a long slog, but I passed the time…”

“Treating other cases?” Claudie asked.

“No. No meetings were ever coordinated. I can only assume a gap in Tithonian sufferers, between then and today, or another specialist at work. But I adhered to the rules, kept quiet. I did private appointments at Oathbreach, disguised as a new age guru, healing where I could…without drama, of course. Without making a name for myself.”

He was talkative, but Claudie held his eyes. “When you say no good, you mean that by 2017 I’m dead.”

His wife was in treatment; he could say so. John quit. “Claudine is very ill.”

Highbar’s HR chief, finishing him, said, “So we’re bonusing you a thousand dollars. Mr. Villas memoed that to me, initialed.”

Thank them? No, the Grey advised. She doesn’t want your tears.

I don’t feel that I’m going to cry.

“I wouldn’t care either,” she said. Deadpan. But, with some engagement: “Cancer is so expensive. For whatever reason, you didn’t take our insurance.”

“I don’t need it. We…we don’t need it.” His eyes filled. He heard a gulp at his back, leaving Highbar for good.

35

Tithonians

The Resident (part twenty-three)

(2022, Stephanie Foster)