Educated Fishwives by Adam West

I decided to check again. For the last time. No point keep on hoping the consignment would make it here before the twenty-second.

It wouldn’t. No choice but to proceed before it was too late.

A hologram whirred up and out of the console in a lazy fashion, like a half-cut genie who could not care less about being emancipated.

The soon-to-be-re-incarcerated figure intoned: ‘UPDATE: Next consignment due eighteenth of –’

I jabbed a finger at an ephemeral terminal button. Cut the genie’s damn circuits.

‘Don’t worry,’ Rishka said.

‘I do,’ I said, ‘what if…what if I…?’

Her arm came around me. We listened to music till dawn. Off-World Imports Inc. Ancient stuff from cold climates before the days of the corporate World State and Global meltdown.

Amiina. Samaris. Rökkurró.

‘Good music back then,’ I said, ‘in the twenty-first century?’

‘Falleg,’ she replied.

I agreed it was beautiful and before the sky turned to pink Rishka gave me something to drink. It was the end for the old me, and I knew it, but I wasn’t afraid any longer. We had it all worked out.

My eyes closed shut. She stayed with me. Held my hand while I slipped away.

*

‘We might be fishwives, but at least we’re educated fishwives.’

Sure, I thought, fishwives: I know what it means, but why educated? And why do these women stay here all day long ordering more and more Coble cake and coffee?

I hear them in my sleep. I see them writing on the napkins. The fishwives see me and I see the girl – the pretty waitress who never tires – who refuses to look at me.

Ground-hog day has to stop sooner or later.

Later, I think. But it goes on. Damn if I’ll stay stuck here forever.

‘I say…’ One of the fishwives leans over and hands me a napkin, ‘you were crying just then, weren’t you?’

‘Was I?’

‘Dry your eyes and stop snuffling.’

She gets up and stands over me and watches whilst I unfold the napkin. The words printed on it are what I see on cab ads, and the holographic sidewalk hoardings, the overground pipes.

Installer jam. Please wait.

It’s a message and the message is for me. I know I know what the ubiquitous code means only I can’t unlock the part of my brain that holds that information. I don’t have the key. The password. A legitimate way in.

‘No cure for blocked synapses.’ The fishwife standing next to me smiles at her own joke. Some of her teeth are missing. Apple purée slides down her chin.

Back at the table her compatriots are shovelling down Coble cake. I leave them to it. The waitress appears, picks up the napkin and eats it. For the benefit of the cake-eaters signs FILE SAVED then DOWNLOAD COMPLETE.

File saved. Sure. Download complete – I can buy that, too, but why won’t the waitress look at me? And why does she always shrug like that, like it’s no big deal, when I’m stuck here day after day after day?

She turns away.

Run and stop her, I think. Don’t let Ground-hog day triumph again.

I catch and restrain her.

‘Let go of us mister.’

I let go.

She steps back and squats.

Gives birth.

Not a baby boy or girl. Something old.

Whatever it is it does not move. Uncoil itself from its painful looking foetal position.

The girl who bore it, the pretty waitress I stopped, stands over it and prods it with a toe. The thing coughs. Spluttering wet coughs. I see the fishwives have gone.

Thank goodness the fishwives have gone.

I look down at the ‘newborn’ and think; all this freaky symbolism makes me want to throw up.

The waitress is holding my hand. I feel her warmth. As real as real can be. I know who she is. I know what I am looking down at – the wizened creature unfolding and regressing fast.

Me. I. Myself.

The consignment came through on time albeit a week after I ‘passed on’. I have returned. Been poured back into a new, ersatz body.

Same me. New shell.

Rishka worked out the glitch. The Ground-hog day nightmare that kept me stuck with those damn educated fishwives. Loop after loop after loop.

The download finally installed successfully which means I got another twenty-five Alphane cycles with my beloved.

Of course, we are not immortal.

 

Adam West

 

Banner photograph: By Léonard Defrance {1735-1805) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons