“Pre-Existing Conditions” by Blaize M. Kaye

Pre-Existing Conditions

by Blaize M. Kaye

Above, a gigantic metal ark accelerates.

Below, bathtime.

523 Days post-launch

“Dad, what is thinking?”

David kneels before a bathtub filled with warm water, bubbles, bath toys, and the five-year-old girl with brown hair and darker brown eyes.

“That’s a good question, Marcie-Mouse,” says David. Positive reinforcement is key to raising an inquisitive child, according to “Sparks’ Guide to Single Parenting.”

Marcie floats a plastic spacecraft, a cartoon-like replica of the Yamataka, across the choppy surface of the bathwater.

“Thinking is what we do with our brains,” he says.

“Can you remember where your brain is?”

Marcie points to her head with her free hand.

“Mmm, right,” he says. “And thinking is what your brain does when you do things like counting or remembering the words to a song that you really like.”

Marcie’s small face is suddenly serious. David can almost see the follow-up question percolating to the surface. At five she is more inquisitive than Alva, her brother, ever was.

4222 Days pre-launch

David and Wendy drove south for the weekend. Neither of them owned a car, but then again, very few people did anymore, and so the roads were practically abandoned except for the occasional truck carrying prefabbed goods too bulky for the high-speed rail system that ran from Johannesburg to Cape Town.

They’d met three months earlier at a mutual friend’s birthday party; a lucky accident placed them just across the table from one another at dinner. David mentioned to her, as a way of breaking the ice, that he thought the flower arrangement between them was “quite pretty.” She responded by recounting a story about flowers, dinner, and Alan Turing in Poland. David had never heard of Turing, and Wendy was more than happy to give an impromptu seminar on the life and work of the great man. It seemed to David that not only was Wendy one of the most beautiful people he’d ever met, but that she knew almost everything about everything. She worked in finance, but she’d studied mathematics and philosophy before doing “something that would cover a mortgage.” As the night wore on, he found himself falling into a kind of dazed awe at her.

Before he left, he asked if he might text her sometime, to which she smiled and said, “I was about to ask the same thing.”

Their conversation hadn’t let up in the weeks and months since.

Wendy took their long car trip as an opportunity to introduce David to the music of Wes Montgomery. And he knew, as he watched her speak animatedly about octaves and single lines, that the awe that he’d felt the first time they met was a precursor to love, and that he’d like nothing more than to spend the rest of his life learning to see the world as she did.

As their car slid smoothly and near silently through the late afternoon heat and dust of the Karoo, Kazuro Takahashi, an amateur astronomer working out of the Hokkaido Observatory, Japan, was tracking what he would register as Near-Earth Object 2037 DA, or as it came to be known, Yanluo. An asteroid, nearly 10 km across at its widest point. In approximately a quarter of a century, without intervention, Yanluo would set Earth’s atmosphere ablaze. It would strike the blue planet somewhere in the subarctic north of Asia, and make life on land impossible for anything larger than a stoat.

523 Days post-launch

Then comes the follow up question.

“Dad, but what is thinking-about?”

“What do you mean, Mouse?”

“Thinking about?” she says, louder this time. Marcie, like most five year olds, doesn’t yet understand that simply repeating a question at a higher volume doesn’t count as elaborating.

“I can hear you, can you tell me where you heard it?” David asks.

“I’m THINKING ABOUT the weather outside and if I should wear my JACKET!” She sings. “It’s from Timmy Tiger!”

“Ah, right. You want to know what it means to think about something?”

She nods.

“That’s a tough one,” says David, “how did you get so smart?”

She flashes David her widest, proudest gap-toothed grin in a way that immediately reminds him of Wendy.

She watches him attentively, her cheeks shiny and pink from the warm water. At her age, she still believes he knows everything.

“It’s hard to say, Mouse, but thinking is a very special thing we can do. It’s kind of like our brains can reach out and touch things that aren’t in the room with us. If I tell you to pick up your toys, you have to touch them with your hands. But if I tell you to think about your toys, you can just imagine them, even if you’re on the other side of the house or at creche.”

She nods.

“Okay, Dad,” she says, as if it’s settled, and turns her attention back to her bath toys.

Although Marcie seems satisfied with his explanation, David isn’t. It’s moments like this when he feels Wendy’s absence hardest.

“Okay, time to clean those feet.” Says David.

Marcie leans back and lifts her legs out of the water.

“Any owchies?” David asks as he wipes foam from her calves and feet with a cloth.

“Not today, Daddy.”

David nods.

No pain was good. No pain was better than good.

Marcie rights herself in the bath, grabs her plastic replica of the Yamataka and runs it through a miniature mountain of foam.

1302 Days pre-launch

Marcie had her first fracture before she was six weeks old. The first to be diagnosed, at least. David and Wendy never learned exactly how it happened, Marcie simply started crying one evening and wouldn’t let up.

They fed her.

They changed her.

They took shifts holding her, pacing the nursery in the weak yellow glow of a Big-Bird night light. Murmuring softly to their infant daughter. But she was inconsolable.

Babies weren’t supposed to cry that much.

At the hospital, the doctor on call pressed Marcie’s chest lightly with an extended forefinger, then checked her belly and her arms. When he ran the tips of his fingers over her tiny skull, he seemed to David like a discerning shopper testing a sweet melon for ripeness. When he rotated Marcie’s leg, she screamed as if he’d pushed a pin straight into her thigh.

523 Days post-launch

David leans forward, fills a plastic jug with bathwater, and rinses the soap from her hair. Marcie closes her eyes tightly against the soapy rivulets that run down her forehead and over her eyelids. Wendy had a way of holding the palm of her hand flat against Marcie’s head so that no water would get into her eyes. Another bit of domestic magic David hadn’t been able to master just yet.

“Good job, Mouse!”

“Daaaad, I’m not a mouse, I’m a little girl,” she says, smiling with eyes still closed.

He wipes her face with the handcloth.

“I know that, silly. It’s a nickname.”

“Where did I get my mouse nickname?” she asks.

“Mom gave it to you.”

1303 Days pre-launch

When an infant comes into hospital with multiple fractures, certain protocols are enacted. Regardless of whether the hospital staff suspect abuse, procedures are to be followed. After an interview with a police officer, the hospital social worker, and after signing a mountain of documentation, David and Wendy were allowed to take their daughter home.

That night David drove more carefully than he had in his entire life. Wendy sat in the back next to Marcie in her car-seat. Alva was asleep at his grandparents’ house.

The diagnosis was osteogenesis imperfecta, type-1. There would be further tests to confirm, but the doctors were relatively certain. She had brittle bones. But with caution and care, they told them, Marcie could live a relatively normal life.

“Mouse-bones,” said Wendy as she gently laid their daughter in her cot.

523 Days post-launch

David dries Marcie, wraps her in a towel, and carries her through to her bedroom to get changed for bed. Her damp hair smells of the bubble bath, a fake-sweet smell somewhere between orange concentrate and strawberry milk.

“The onesie or the nighty?” He asks, holding each set of pyjamas to his chest in turn, as if he were modelling them for her. She giggles at the show.

He knows which of the two she’ll choose, but he likes to give her the option anyway.

“The nighty!” She yells. Always the nighty.

Dark blue with a cartoon rocket on the chest, a bright orange-yellow flame shooting from the single engine while an astronaut waves from a portal in the side of its silver-grey body.

“You want the rocket again, hmm?” He asks.

She nods.

David pulls the nighty over her head and gently guides her arms through the sleeves. He puts a thick pair of socks on her feet so that they won’t get cold. She always kicks the blankets off while she’s sleeping.

He points to the astronaut on her chest.

“And who is this fine fellow?” He asks.

“Alva!” She says proudly.

David isn’t sure when she decided that the dumpy cartoon astronaut with the baby blue visor was a picture of her brother but it’s not something he wants to discourage. He’s not sure how much she remembers of Alva, or how clearly. David does what he can to keep her memories clear. He makes sure to talk about her brother during their bedtime routine, reminding her that he loved PB&J sandwiches and rugby, and he spends time with her among Alva’s things.

David has tried to leave the house as it was and Alva’s bedroom is nearly untouched. Posters of giant robots and caped heroes still hang on the walls. A small shelf crammed full of SF novels and hand painted figurines sit unmoved. Totems of what his adolescence might have been, might still be, if everything works out. Wendy had been delighted when he showed an interest in what she called “cool, nerdy stuff.” She was the first person David had ever met who played tabletop roleplaying games. When she was in high school she founded an SFF reading group. There were only two members.

When David thought of “cool and nerdy,” he thought of his wife.

When they left, Alva and Wendy were each only allowed to take a single “comfort item” with them. Nothing living, no food, no drugs or alcohol, and nothing that weighed more than a kilogram.

Alva had chosen to take the single volume copy of The Lord of the Rings, his thirteenth birthday present.

David doesn’t know what Wendy took with her.

523 Days post-launch

Above, Yanluo carves its dark way through the void towards the pale blue dot.

Below, storytime.

“Are you sleeping in your own bed tonight, Mouse?”

She shakes her head.

“No, by you.”

She hasn’t slept in her own bed since Wendy and Alva left.

David picks Marcie up gently and carries her to his bedroom. When Marcie started sleeping next to him, he moved the base of the bed to the garage so that the mattress lies directly on the floor. Marcie rolls while she sleeps, and his bed doesn’t have bumpers to stop her from hurting herself.

Safer to be only a few centimetres from the ground.

“Show me where they are now, Dad!” she asks as he lays her on her side of the mattress.

“Okay,” he says.

David picks up his tablet and opens the app that tracks the Ark’s progress. The app syncs with the backend and the new data – coordinates, heading, velocity – are displayed as a series of tables. David places the tablet on the dresser table, above which hangs a framed schematic diagram of the solar system.

“They say that they’re going faster now.”

Marcie holds her hand flat and parallel to the ground, moves it backwards and forwards and makes a whooshing sound.

“Yep, that’s right, super fast” says David. Her enthusiasm for the Ark warms him.

He takes a magic marker from the dresser’s top drawer.

“And tonight, they’re right about here,” he says.

David makes a small cross near a dark green planet. He knows that the mark he makes is off by hundreds of millions of kilometres, but the movement, the marking off of the Ark’s “progress” has become an integral part of their nightly routine.

“That’s Neptune,” says Marcie seriously, pointing a tiny index finger in the direction of the poster.

“Are you sure,” David teases.

“Yes, Dad. You told me yesterday!”

“I did?”

She nods.

“Well, I guess you must be right then. And do you see that even though the Ark is so far away, our brains can still think about it?”

“And we think about Mom and Alva too?” She asks.

“Yes, Mouse, when we think about the Ark we think about them too. Now which two stories do you want me to read?”

As Marcie picks through her small stack of books, David retrieves the tablet from the dresser, sits on his side of the mattress and opens a website that tracks the progress of a second spacecraft, one travelling in a different direction than the Ark. One with a very different mission.

512 Days pre-launch

David and Alva were, along with most of the rest of the world, watching “Saviour”, a reality show where 40 ordinary people got to compete for a place on the Yamataka, one of several spacecraft being built or retrofitted to intercept Yanluo.

The contestants, dressed in red, green, and blue jumpsuits were currently trying to solve giant slide puzzles in zero gravity.

Marcie was in her crib. Wendy sat, noise cancelling earbuds firmly in place, working on her tablet.

She refused to watch “Saviour” on principle. All propaganda, she’d said of it.

David, if pressed, would admit she had a point.

The revelation of a potentially civilization ending near earth object was masterfully handled.

Masterton and Staples, a British PR firm that ordinarily dealt with the rehabilitation of disgraced celebrities, was brought in to coordinate the revelation of Yanluo to the public.

They did what they did best. Rather than focus on possible global conflagration, they used television, radio, and vast networks of social media bots to shift the conversation to the efforts being made to save the world. Calming the public with soothing words from public scientists, perfectly serene smiles from Hollywood’s finest, and triumphant speeches from the world’s elite. So far, global panic had mostly been averted.

David’s phone vibrated with a message from Wendy, who was sitting on the couch across the lounge staring at him, waiting for him to read what she’d sent.

She wouldn’t message him like this unless it was something she didn’t want Alva to hear.

I think we should apply for the Ark project, her message read.

Her thumbs worked furiously as she typed her follow up.

“I’ve been reading r/yanluo and some of the posts have gone deep. I don’t know how much of this is catastrophizing, but it looks like even with the kinetic deflection they’re planning, there’s still more than a 50% percent chance that Yanluo hits Earth.”

David responded – “That seems not so bad, though?”

She shot David a puzzled look, then looked back to her tablet and typed furiously.

“That’s a flip of a coin, David. Not great. And even if the worst doesn’t happen, it could still be really bad if it breaks into fragments. We need to get on that Ark.”

David nodded, if Wendy thought it was a good idea, it probably was. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt?” he replied.

Wendy sent a link to the Ark project.

If the Yamataka represented Earth’s optimism, its hope at conquering the oncoming asteroids, the Ark was something more pessimistic.

Wendy would say more realistic.

Two ships: one to save us, the other to preserve us.

The Ark would set out on a wide out and back path long enough to gauge whether the crew of the Yamataka had been successful in deflecting Yanluo, and, if not, it would settle into a hibernation state, where it would wait for, either, the surface of the Earth to settle enough for repopulation, or for the nascent Mars biosphere efforts to come to fruition.

Even in the best case, which would mean at least twenty years aboard the Ark, the plan was for the crew to be put into suspended animation. To those on board, regardless of what happened back on Earth, it would seem as though barely any time had passed.

523 Days post-launch

“So, what are we reading tonight?” asks David.

“The Lost Thing,” says Marcie.

“We can have two stories.”

“Can you read ‘The Lost Thing’ two times?”

David smiles, nods, and picks the book from the pile. Marcie shuffles on to his lap.

“Can you read it funny?” She asks. Marcie likes it when he does the voices, but it gets her too excited to fall asleep.

“Just the first time, then the second time with my own voice.”

“Okaaaay,” she says.

David reads out loud while Marcie flips the pages.

Once they’re done, David puts the book back on the pile and makes a fuss of plumping up Marcie’s pillow.

“Okay, you lie down now, I’m going to the bathroom quick.” David says.

“Do you want some water?” he asks.

“No thanks, Dad.”

424 Days pre-launch

A week after receiving their mail welcoming them to the Ark project, they received another mail, marked urgent. There was an issue with their application, it said, and they were requesting a meeting with David and Wendy at their earliest convenience.

Within the hour, over video chat, a young woman in a sharp, dark suit – an official representative of the Ark project’s medical evaluation board – explained the effects that zero gravity has on the human body, particularly the deleterious effects it has on healthy bone.

“And that’s the best case,” she said, her voice thin through Wendy’s tablet’s speaker.

“That’s assuming that Marcie can even leave the planet safely. Escaping Earth’s gravity, as I’m sure you know, puts immense pressure on the body.”

She paused for a moment, letting the implications of what she said settle.

“I’m afraid that your daughter’s pre-existing condition rules out any possibility of her participating in the Ark programme. I’m so sorry. Do you have any questions?”

They didn’t.

They thanked the young woman for her time.

After the call, they sat in silence. David reached out and held Wendy’s hand.

“I thought this might happen,” he said gently.

“I really didn’t think we’d get picked at all,” she replied, “but of course I thought of Marcie. It was just such a long shot that I hoped, you know…” she trailed off.

David squeezed her hand, then pulled her close.

He knew what he had to do. He’d read all the terms and conditions when the contract had come through. Nearly a hundred pages of dense legalese. It was clear – Wendy had applied. It was Wendy they wanted. Wendy and her dependents.

He knew, too, that it would have to be him who brought up the unthinkable possibility; she would never ask him to sacrifice himself or think of leaving her girl. It would have to be him who suggested that they divorce; him who asked Wendy to sign over custody of Marcie. It had to be David who suggested that, if she did, then she and Alva would stand a chance.

And he knew how much it was going to hurt.

0 Days

Marcie and David sat together with popcorn and watched a stream of the shuttle launch that carried Wendy and Alva into orbit. The next time Alva saw his little sister she would be in her thirties; if they ever saw each other again at all.

523 Days post-launch

David pulls the thin blanket up to Marcie’s chest and tucks it tightly around her, knowing that as soon as the lights go out it will be kicked into a messy bundle at the foot of the bed.

“Night, sweet,” he says, and kisses her forehead.

“Night.”

David switches off the light. He feels Marcie shifting beside him and knows a question is coming before she asks it.

“Dad, do Mom and Alva think about us?”

“They’re sleeping most of the time, but I’m sure that when they wake up they’ll think about us, yes.”

She processes silently for a moment.

“Dad.”

“Yes?”

“If I think about Mom and Alva really hard … will they know?”

Something like a dull pain wells up inside him. It takes whatever he has left to push it down and answer her.

“Yes, Mouse, they will. Now close your eyes.”

Below, bedtime.

Above, a gigantic metal ark accelerates.

_______________

Blaize M. Kaye is a South African writer living in Wellington, New Zealand. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of venues including Nature and Fantastic Stories. He has been short-listed for the Short Story Day Africa prize and the Nommo Award for African Speculative Fiction.