On the anniversary marking the thirty-first year of my emergence into this world, I felt the bare skin of another human being for the first time in memory.
Amelia always said I'd come to bad ends.
How I ended up in her clutch, considering I had no genetic relationship with the others, remains a mystery. The story, as she tells it, is that four months after their arrival, she put three infants to bed in their pods and the next morning, without explanation, a fourth child was delivered into her care.
When she picked me up to examine her newest addition, she said, the first thing I did was reach out my tiny hand and touch her cheek.
"I nearly dropped you then and there, I was so frightened," my caretaker told me. "I knew about defectives, of course, even had my suspicions about a few individuals over the years, but I never imagined I might have to raise one. My duty was to report you, return you to the Center for treatment. Perhaps if I had, you might have had a chance to turn out normal. I don't know why, but I rushed both of us to the decontaminator instead. I knew then you'd be nothing but trouble."
She was right; my abnormality proved vexing on a regular basis. Again and again she found me hiding with my gloves peeled off, touching everything in sight, including myself. And every time she marched me into the decontamination chamber, filling it with a mist of disinfectant so pungent I can still taste it, years after I learned to hold my breath, refusing to inhale though it made my head swim, until she relented, satisfied I was clean enough.
"I could, no, should, have you hospitalized. Few caretakers are as tolerant, nor patient, as I," she reminded me on many occasions. "The world is even less so, Astrid. Don't you understand barehanded touching only leads to even more...perverse behavior?"
When I was eighteen I finally understood the great risk my caretaker was taking, allowing me to roam free when I belonged in a hospital. It didn't stop me from touching myself or anything else I dared—despite my best efforts to abstain, the compulsion continued to seize me—but eventually I learned to be far more discreet.
I was born this way. I never wanted to be a defective, a deviant; I wanted to be normal, like my pod-brother and -sisters, like Amelia. Like everyone else around me.
Yet nothing exhilarated me more than the sensation of my fingertips stroking my skin. And even though I knew it was wrong, I fantasized about meeting someone like me, someone I could talk to, who knew what it was like to struggle with a tactile addiction. What's worse, in the darkest recesses of my corrupt mind lurked even more shameful desires—to touch, and be touched by, another.
~*~*~
I started working for the Office of Historical Records two months ago, thanks to my pod-sister Mercy, who's an undersecretary to the Assistant Minister of Public Safety. The position sounded more prestigious than it turned out to be. Mostly I ran errands for the Historian, an older, disheveled man with sharp edges and a penchant for grumbling.
His favorite activity was spending hours poring over brittle sheets of yellow paper—until I started working there the only time I had ever
seen
paper was in a museum. I never could understand what he found so fascinating studying those documents, not that he ever gave me the chance to ask. He considered me more a nuisance than anything, and I once heard him muttering about vanity positions and cronyism, so I ran his errands and gave him his space. Compared to my previous job at the food dispenser repair facility, this position was a dream come true.
Given the irritation my presence seemed to illicit in my superior, nothing surprised me more than to hear him wish me a happy emergence day.
"Well? It is usually customary to thank a person for wishing you well on such an occasion."
I shook my head. "I'm sorry. You took me by surprise; thank you. I...didn't not realize you knew the anniversary of my emergence."
He rolled his eyes. "I'm a historian, remember? I wouldn't be much of one if I couldn't find such basic information, now would I?"
"I suppose not."
We stood there looking at each other. I don't think either of us knew what to say; it was the first remotely personal conversation we'd had.
"Well, why don't you take the rest of the day off, go enjoy yourself," he said gruffly.
For the second time in one day he surprised me. "Are you, are you sure? Did you clear it with the..."
"Are you questioning your superior?" he snapped.
"N-no," I stammered. "I'm sorry. Thank you, sir. Your generosity is most appreciated."
"You're welcome. Well, what are you standing around for? Go, go on. How often do you get a day off with compensation?"
I hurried out, more than a little flustered.
As I stood in the lift watching the lights for each level flash by, I thought about what the Historian had said. 'Basic information', he called it. If only he knew.
When I was ten years old, after she found me without my gloves yet again, I asked Amelia, my eyes brimming with tears, why I was cursed with this compulsion while the rest of my pod-siblings were not. "I thought the urge had long been bred out of us," I sobbed. "What's wrong with me?"
My caretaker explained that on rare occasions, flaws passed through the genetic filters; my condition was simply a genetic throwback from a less evolved period in human history.
"It doesn't mean you can't live a normal life, Astrid," she asserted. "You just have to work harder than others to control your urges. I'm confident with patience and discipline you will eventually learn to sublimate your more...primitive tendencies."
Despite her assurances, I languished in a depression for weeks, devastated. Centuries after the near-perfection of humanity, a tiny fraction of the population, like me, were still subject to the cruelty of chance, condemned to a life full in the knowledge that we would never quite measure up.
I suppose Amelia took pity on me, for one night she pulled me into a closet and whispered in the darkness the story of my arrival. I asked where I came from, why I hadn't been delivered with the others, but she said she didn't know. She had asked her superiors the same questions, but they warned her that asking too many questions was not in anyone's best interest.
"Never forget, Astrid, some questions are better left unanswered; some things better left unsaid. Do you understand too much knowledge is dangerous? Do you understand what will happen if you ever repeat what I have said this night?"
I didn't understand, not really, but I'll never forget the way her voice quivered. I knew only that my caretaker was terribly afraid, so I promised never to tell another soul. We never spoke of it again, and I kept my promise, held this secret for more than twenty years. Still, not a day goes by when I don't long to know the truth. On what day did I actually emerge into the world? For what reason was I taken from one pod and placed into another? I guess I'll never know.
The lift came to a stop and the doors slid open.
"Well, you getting off or are you just going to stand there?"
I blinked and saw a sour-faced man waiting to enter. "Uh, I'm sorry. Excuse me."
Stepping outside into the sunlight, I turned my face into its warmth, savoring the breeze for a brief moment as it caressed my skin.
I was thinking about how I would spend the rest of my day when I recalled I had forgotten my communicator. Knowing my return would undoubtedly irritate my superior, I considered leaving it behind, but decided against it. It was a special day after all, one I might want to spend with my friends Xen and Errol.
As I waited for the lift, someone spoke to me.
"It's a beautiful day out there."
I looked up with a jerk into the face of a tall man with twinkling brown eyes. His mop of dark hair hung carelessly as if he'd emerged from his bunk and hadn't bothered to groom himself properly. "Really? I hadn't noticed."
The lift arrived and we both stepped in.
"Level ten," I said to the computer, staring straight ahead.
"Huh. I'm going to the same level."
From the tone of his voice I sensed he was smiling at me. I shifted to my right, increasing the space between us. "You don't say."
"I'm going to the Office of Historical Records; you?"
