Orbits: A Contemporary Fantasy of Pattern and Apocalypse (Part 4 of 4: Escape Velocity?)

Sarah and I did all right on the fringes of Boston. We had enough for a down payment on our own unit, and Sarah had a rare blood type, which meant she got good money selling her plasma, which she did every Tuesdays. We had about 300 square feet on a southern-facing unit, and the sunlight did a lot to brighten up the place.

She took a job as a virtual instructor, leasing a VR-Haptic-Suit and using it to lead international classes on English Composition for Business. I drifted into life insurance. It was a living. The only thing of value people had left to insure was themselves. Make this sacrifice now, and provide for your children when you're gone. It turns out decades of hawking frequent buyer programs and company credit cards gave me a decent grounding in pitching the intangible.

And the job provided an electric car! Selling life insurance requires empathy, and it's easier to project empathy when you're face to face. I could justify taking trips out to the suburbs to pursue the wealthier hold-outs, the ones living behind gates, with generators and solar panels to keep the lights on.

A year after the move I met up with Nancy and Reggie, and we drove out to the old mall.

A handwritten sign on the main entrance explained that Saturdays were market days. People with things to sell were to apply for a merchant's permit at the church (the old cinema). Also: Services on Sunday.

This was a Thursday. The parking lot was empty, except for a few rusting cars and drifting tumbleweeds of shredded plastic. Grass poked up around the lamp-posts cracked through the borders between sidewalk and asphalt. We walked to our store.

There they were.

They practically glowed in the darkness. They drifted through the old cafe, past the torn out registers. One wandered up in "make-out corner," the former haunt of dissatisfied teens and the homeless.

Nancy said, "I can't believe it."

We went in. I didn't need my key.

We cheered. We whooped. We hollered. "Guys! How you doing? Long time no see. What the hell are you doing, hanging around this dump?"

They didn't answer. That was fine with us. Nancy opened her picnic basket and we spread it out in front of the windows, where leather-bound journals and stationery used to be. We drank wine and ate sandwiches. The Planets drifted by. We argued about whether they followed their former patterns. Reggie thought they were moving around the places where the shelves used to be. I wasn't so sure. There were still some shadows on the floor from the old fixtures, but the carpet was so filthy it was hard to make them out. So we argued about the old layout too, remembering old times.

Reggie got tipsy and announced he was going to do something he'd always wanted to do. He took a running start and jumped up onto a Planet. He had to wrap his arm around its neck to hang on. He rode him towards the wreck of the old info counter, until the Planet's arm moved down and upset the grip he had with his legs.

"How was it?" I said.

Reggie shivered. "Kind of creepy, actually. Like riding around on a statue."

"Or a Golem," Nancy said. "Anyway, I think that was disrespectful. We should just be thankful they're still here."

---

Nancy read something in a news-feed about the mall's impending demolition. She wrote to tell me. It had been two years.

Life went on. It was okay, but -

But no. No, it wasn't. Sarah was gone. She decided she couldn't keep spending 12 hours a day wearing a suit that completely blocked out the natural world. Selling her blood was leaving her weak and making her sick. And she wanted a baby. A baby would give some meaning to our lives, at least.

I refused. Why condemn another human being to this? To give us meaning? Selfish.

So she took off. Farm labor, she said, would at least have some honesty to it.

I downsized to a singles apartment, ten by fifteen feet. I kept trying to sell people hope for their children's future and spent what little free time I had on porn and video games.

When insurance sales dried up, I was moved to claims and investigations. Now my job was to find ways of denying families the benefits I'd sold them years earlier. I was not a popular man. My company trained me in self-defense and issued a firearm. I remembered the night of the robbery and wondered what would have happened if I'd had a gun. The thought made me feel sick.

At least the car they gave me was bigger. Armor plated.

I answered Nancy. "We should see them one last time," I said. "We should warn them."

"I can't get the time off," Nancy said. "I just wanted to let you know."

I'd lost touch with Reggie and Ernie and the rest. So I went alone.

---

Some of the roads through the old shopping district were so cracked and overgrown with weeds, it was hard to believe they were ever paved. My car was sleek and out of place, an alien presence in this abandoned quarter. It was stupid to come this far alone, even in an armored car. I didn't care.

I arrived before sunset. Wreckers and bulldozers were already lined up around the building. The tang of grease and petroleum engines gave a primitive urgency to the atmosphere. I parked behind them and drew my gun as I crossed to the building where I'd spent so many years.

The door was locked, strangely. I took out my key. The mechanism was corroded so badly that it wouldn't turn. No matter. The windows were already smashed. I kicked aside shards of glass and hopped over, landing on the sun-bleached sign that promised free wi-fi.

The low sun cast long rectangles across the floor, catching on smashed bottles and fallen fluorescent bulbs. Plants were growing in here, and the ceiling tiles were black with mold. I crossed to the escalator and climbed it, slowly, laboriously. It was dimmer on the second floor, but I propped my flashlight over my gun to check the corners for lingering customers one last time. There was no one there. In the restrooms, I startled a family of raccoons from their nest on the baby-changing table. They scampered up through the drop ceiling. The restroom floors were littered with used condoms and syringes, and the wallpaper hung down in curling sheets. The offices and break-rooms were locked and the key-pad was long dead, but my key still worked. The safe was gone from the cash office, sold with the furniture. The shelves were still up in the manager's office. The operations manuals and merchandising bibles were still up there. The computers were gone but for some reason a keyboard remained. So did the cheap office chairs where I'd delivered performance reviews, and received them. A fifty-cent raise every year for two decades. I smiled at the patch of floor where Sarah and I misbehaved, back when I had to pull overnights. I wished I'd done that more often.

All gone tomorrow.

I went back out to the floor. The sun was setting. Almost pitch black. There was no power to the building any more, and the streetlights in the parking lot had all toppled or been shot out. I'd never seen the building so dark.

"Please come," I said. "One more time. Nothing ever stopped you. Come and see me. Show me what you'll do tomorrow, when this is gone. Show me how to go on!"

I waited all night.

THE END

---

---

Thank you for reading "Orbits." This is the first piece of serialized fiction I've shared here on Steemit. "Orbits" originally appeared on Wattpad.com, which is a fine forum for sharing work and collecting comments on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis - if you can manage to secure a following! But I wanted to share it here on Steemit where I've found a thoughtful readership and a good deal more motivation. I will, most likely, be posting future fiction projects here first.

---

To accompany the story: It turns out there's a whole genre of Abandoned Places videos, with a sub-genre focused on Abandoned Malls. That's a lot of decaying retail space! These kids seem to have a pretty good time making the most of suburban blight. Then again, what kid doesn't dream of spending the night in an empty mall, one day?

---

Cover painting by the esteemed @donnadavisart.

---

Quick link to: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.

CLICK HERE FOR LINKS TO THE REST OF "ORBITS," AND FUTURE FICTION PROJECTS.

---

CLICK HERE TO SEE ALL MY POSTS ON STEEMIT, SORTED BY CATEGORY.