Data Dump V

"But no frown of mine
Will betray the company I keep."
- Sylvia Plath

(* * *)

Daria worked on her solitare some more. It was a version called Klondike. She liked Klondike because unlike the solitare games she learned in childhood, every Klondike game had a solution that didn't depend so much on how the cards landed. Books were hard to come by, and paper was expensive. Daria doubted that her request for a What Is To Be Done? frightened the robots that much, but she knew that they could print out anything she asked them to. They just didn’t care to do it, not unless she paid, and the best they could offer her was rental. God forbid she own a book of her own.

Yolanda stepped over. “Hey, Yolanda,” said Daria. “Want to play Mao?”

“No, I’m Mao’d out for the day.”

“How about more Mao this afternoon?”

“I have something else planned, but if it doesn’t pan out, then sure,” said Yolanda. “Just keep in mind the number one rule of Mao. Say, where’s your partner in crime?”

Partner in crime. She hadn’t heard that phrase used in years, and never applied to the person Yoland was speaking of. ”I believe she’s in the shower getting ready for her visit.”

“It must be nice,” sighed Yolanda. She walked away. “Take care of yourself, Daria. Watch out for rogue Mao players.”

(* * *)

Daria Morgendorffer stepped into the communal shower. Without complaint, a robot scrubbed each inch of the floor to keep the room spotless if reeking of industrial cleanser.

Normally, the room was packed with naked flesh, fifty people to a shower. All sorts of flesh, from the taut flesh of youth to the scarred, or cellulite packed, or sagging flesh of old age. Daria had never showered with that many people before since high school. She hated group showers then and she hated them even more now. It was a low point in her eyes to start the day with such an indiginity.

There was one person in the shower – Sandi Griffin. She was using a nail file to trim down her nails. Completely naked, she would work a few seconds, blow the pulverized fingernail away and then admire her handiwork.

“Are you done?” asked Daria, her voice echoing between the blue tiles.

“Uhh…no. Everything has to be perfect. As perfect as I know how to make it. There’s not enough credit for new makeup, so I have to be perfectly cleaned.” Satisfied with her filing, Sandi opened the Recycle Door near her shower and tossed the file in as used garbage, to continue its life cycle.

“You’re going to be late. Stacy is going to be here any minute.”

“The robots will tell us when she’s here,” said Sandi. “Besides, it’s important to keep certain people waiting. The person who has to wait is the inferior to the one who makes them wait. I kept Stacy waiting all the time. She’s used to it.”

(* * *)

A robot ambled forward quickly. It told Daria that she had a visitor, a “Stacy Nibblet, at the far bench of the quadrangle, near the outlet stream.” Daria told the machine to tell Sandi, and went down to greet Stacy herself.

As she walked towards the bench, she saw a small woman waiting. The way she held her hands to her lap, even when standing, left no doubt in Daria’s mind that it was the Stacy from high school. The pigtails were gone now, replaced by an expensive suit and nice shoes with a purse that betrayed a pedigree that only Sandi Griffin could decipher.

“Hello, Stacy,” said Daria, extending a hand for a handshake.

“Daria!” Stacy walked over to hug Daria. Daria returned the hug as well as she could, still resistant to human contact. However, her resistance to such tactile stimuli had diminished over the years. She could feel the warmth of Stacy’s body even through the suit.

It was time for Stacy and Daria to catch up. Daria had learned some conversational skills. F-O-R. Family. Occupation. Recreation. The acronym gave Daria at least three things to talk about when caught shorthanded, and with Stacy Rowe Nibblet that was definitely the case.

Daria only had the chance to use the first one: family. Stacy was married, of course. She had one child, a son, Brett who was now 11 years old. Brett was doing well in school. Her husband was a bureaucrat and the Nibblets lived in an exurb of Washington, D. C. Stacy had time to be a homemaker, and she homeschooled her child.

It was Daria that found herself the subject of conversation, vis-à-vis her sister, Quinn Morgendorffer. Quinn and Stacy had lost touch after college, and Daria filled Stacy in on the missing parts of Quinn’s life. Quinn had graduated and went to work as a marketing person for a music company in California. She got the chance to meet all the interesting people she wanted to meet – usually music acts – and to be fashionable. She had never married, always wanting to keep herself available for something bigger.

“Quinn always preferred chasing to catching” said Stacy. “I think she liked the gifts and the attention more than she liked the guys.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I remember when you wrote me that she died,” said Stacy. “I know she died of a heart attack, but you never told me exactly what happened.”

“There’s not much to tell. She was in her apartment in Los Angeles and a friend noticed that she hadn’t been answering her phone on Sunday. Quinn didn’t show up to work on Monday, so everyone at the record company panicked. They called the LAPD, which got permission to open the door. When they got there, they found Quinn on the kitchen floor.
She had died the day before, most likely.”

“A heart attack?”

“An aortic dissection. It was a tear in her aorta. The aorta is a large artery, the largest in the human body. Most of the time, the symptom is severe pain, but in Quinn’s case, the pain was so severe she passed out. Unconscious, she simply…bled out. I like to tell myself that when Quinn went, it was a brief moment of pain…and then nothing. She was only thirty-two years old when she died.”

“I remember Quinn telling me her Dad’s heart was bad.”

“Right. He had had a triple bypass eventually. It was a success but he aged almost twenty years overnight. He became a lot mellower. I think he was reconciled to dying. He was happy with his family. He died before Quinn died. I’m sort of glad that he died when he died. Quinn’s death took a toll on Mom emotionally.”

“I’m sorry.” Stacy reached her hand over and took Daria’s.

“Don’t be. People die, it happens.”

“I hope you’re not lonely.”

“Hey,” said Daria. “I’m sort of used to being lonely. And trust me, where I’m at right now, loneliness is not a question. I have a lot of company – “

“ – stacEEEE!!!”

There was a corresponding squeal. Sandi and Stacy embraced each other like long lost sisters. Daria immediately felt a shift in position to third wheel. It was time for the two to catch up and for Daria to listen.

(* * *)

Stacy’s first act was to bring a gift for Sandi. (Daria’s gift was a jar of expensive peanut butter – “I didn’t know what else to get.”) It was an Armani scarf, a real scarf to replace the non-descript piece of cloth that adorned Sandi’s neck. Sandi gushed over the scarf as Daria calculated how much the scarf would have been worth on the credit market. She guessed that someone at the poverty pen would have paid a month’s credit to get their hands on that scarf.

Daria listened to hours of conversation between the two. The two exchanged information as fast as their mouths could convey it. After a very brief update – Stacy = married, Sandi = former news producer – the two began to relive the past, telling stories out of Lawndale High School and the glories of the Fashion Club. Daria was only needed to verify some fact (did Quinn have a green sweater? or was it a chartreuse sweater?) and other than that, she had very little to contribute. Not that it was a burden for Daria. It was almost comforting to listen to Sandi and Stacy rattle on about Bret and Corey and Skylar and a host of names long forgotten. It reminded Daria of better days, memory so comforting that she felt as if her dead sister Quinn would walk in with Tiffany Blum-Deckler any second and the four of them would chat and gossip and Daria would breathe in the nostalgia till it curled the skin at the bottom of her feet.

After a while, Stacy began to check her watch. “Sandi! It’s been great meeting you again! But I have to go!”

“Stacy,” said Sandi, feeling the draft of ancient air pass away, “have you missed me?”

Daria felt the question land with a thud as Stacy answered. “Sure Sandi. I’ve missed you a lot. I really think about you.”

“Stacy, you know I’d love to see your son. You’ve told me so much about him that I feel that he’s almost here. Isn’t the Thanksgiving holiday coming up?”

“Well, Sandi…I think it would be better if I saw you on Thanksgiving. Don’t they treat you well here?” she said, referring to the robots. “Don’t you like it here?”

“What do you think, Stacy? Of course, I don’t like it here. It’s a prison, Stacy. It’s a fucking prison. When I take a crap, Stacy, I have to take a crap on a toilet with no doors. I live in a friggin closet in a bunk bed. I don’t have any clothes except a jump suit that belongs with a road cleaning crew, one that I have to throw away after use so that it gets recycled. I’m on a god-damned allowance, for Christ’s sake. The people here are either obnoxious or depressed. The robots have us hemmed in on all sides. We can’t go anywhere, we can’t see anybody, and we can’t do anything. No, Stacy, I do not like it here.”

“But Sandi…don’t…can’t your brothers help you? What about your parents?”

“Parents? My whole family is probably in hellholes like this. Except for precious Sam, the little rat bastard. And I never saw him lift a hand to help any of us! Stacy, you are our last hope. If we don’t get out of here, we die. We die in here.”

“Don’t talk like that, Sandi.”

“Then can you help us, Stacy? Can you help an old friend?”

“Stacy…you know money is tight?”

“Money is tight! I’ve heard that one before! You can buy me a friggin Armani scarf…but ‘money is tight’. I looked out for you, Stacy. I took care of you, I got you want you wanted, I protected you. And this is the thanks I get? This is how you pay me back. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth. You owe me, Stacy. You owe me.”

“Don’t get mad,” said Stacy, shrinking.

“Stacy,” said Sandi, lowly, “if you don’t come back here and get us out of here…I’ll kill myself. Is that what you want, Stacy? Is that what you want me to do? Will that make you happy to be rid of me? DO YOU WANT ME TO FUCKING KILL MYSELF?”

Stacy began to start crying. Daria stood up and said, “Don’t even joke about that, Griffin. That’s not funny.”

“Oh I’m not joking. I’m just getting started. Stacy! LOOK AT ME! I’M SERIOUS! I’LL DO IT!”

A voice interrupted. “Is there a problem?”

It was a machine. Other machines were following. “Sandi,” the machine said, speaking to her by her first name. “Do you want to lie down?”

“I don’t WANT to lie down!” said Sandi, the tears beginning to fall from her face. “Take me home! Please take me home!”

She grabbed at Stacy’s arm, and Stacy shrunk back in horror. Another robot ran about a hundred yards in four seconds as the first robot grabbed Sandi’s arm away from Stacy.

Sandi screamed. She was fighting the robot, which had one of her arms caught in one of its talons. The tranq cannon swiveled out of its body.

“STACY!” sobbed Sandi. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Don’t leave me here!!”

Daria watched in horror. There was a burst of air from the tranq cannon. And then Sandi collapsed as a rag doll, with the robot suspending Sandi briefly by one limp arm. Daria turned to see how Stacy was, but a robot was already escorting Stacy away.

A third robot surprised Daria. “Daria, do you want to help your friend?”

(* * *)

Daria waited for Sandi to open her eyes. She muttered.

“How do you feel?” Sandi shut her eyes with her closed fists as an answer. She began to sob.

“Sandi…what happened to your Mom and Dad?”

Sandi said nothing, convulsing with tears, not speaking a word to Daria.

Daria rested her head on her elbows. “Did you ever read King Lear, Sandi?”

Sandi shook her head.

“ Turn all her mother's pains and benefits /To laughter and contempt; that she may feel /How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is/To have a thankless child! Away, away!”

Still silence.

“You weren’t much of a reader. Quinn told me a lot about your mom. And that sounds like something that she would say to you.”

“There wasn’t…a day,” said Sandi, between sobs, “…not a day…of my life…when she didn’t…remind me…that I owed everything to her. I heard it…every single friggin day…and if I let her back into my home…after all those years I fought to get away…it would never end. It would never end.”

“So,” said Daria. “So she’s in a place, just like this. Somewhere. You abandoned her.”

“Sam never helped her either,” said Sandi. “It’s not…my fault. It’s not. You don’t know her Daria. You don’t know her.”

“She said…she hoped that someday I’d know the pain I had caused her…and now I do. But…I’d rather live for the rest of my life….” Sandi clamped her jaw to keep from screaming, and Daria could hear the suppressed moans, “I’d rather live here in this shithole…as long as I knew…she was living somewhere worse.”

Daria didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t imagine it. She suspected it, but confronting it did not diminish the horror, it merely increased it.

“Then I’m sorry, Griffin. I’m sorry for the both of you.” Daria climbed up to the top bunk of the bed, to fight her way to an uneasy sleep.