Chapter 1:

Anniversary

Paradiso


“If we could turn back time, could we learn to live right?”

- Lucy Rose, “Shiver”

“Morning Doctor Facher. It has been eleven thousand three hundred and twenty three solar days since your last new client.”

A cool female voice kissed Kellin’s office. The doctor’s eyes snapped open and saw the aged lines of his walnut desk. He pinched the bridge of his nose where his glasses had been pressing against all night. His forehead had been stamped by the imprint of his watch. A downwards counting digital clock sat on the edge of the table.

Doctor Facher’s antique second millennium lamp dimmed. Its hue mingled with winter sunlight caught by a skylight. A dusty thick anthology and a reading lectern lay on the floor.

“DA,” he said. His voice sounded raspy every morning before his first cup of coffee. “Can you clean this up for me, please?”

“Late night reading, Doctor Facher?” the woman’s voice came again. “That’s the fifth time this week. How studious.”

“Just preparing for the appointment,” Kellin rubbed his neck. “Are you going to help me or not?”

Mechanical limbs detached from angular pockets above the chrome ceiling. Thin arms and hands scooped up the tome and lectern and placed them on the desk.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare,” DA read. “My, my. I hope you remember the page you were on. If you don’t mind me asking for the one hundredth and fourteenth time, have you considered–”

“I do mind DA,” Kellin groaned, “And I minded all the other times you asked me.”

“But digital takes up less space, bookmarks your place without the help of a material supplement, and allows you to annotate your copy without blemishing it,” DA mused. “That last one has always confused me. Many readers of paper profess a firm dislike of page annotations. Is that not the only advantage that paper has over digital?”

“What can I say? We can’t all think like you, DA.”

Kellin lifted himself out of his leather chair and stumbled towards his espresso machine on the north end of his office. A human lifetime’s worth of accredited degrees hung on the wall, but what entranced Kellin the most was the tantalizing pop of his vacuum sealed coffee bean canister when he twisted it open.

“You know, I read about this recently,” the doctor said. “Apparently, coffee beans used to be categorized by country of origin.”

“Origin?”

“You know. Countries. Pre-Reclamation Earth.”

“Ah. Of course.”

“People used to say this bean is from so and so,” Kellin chuckled, “and they’d know everything there is to know about the coffee. The altitude where it was grown, the expected flavor, even the price. Now everything’s so much simpler. This batch here? Grown on the four thousand seven hundred and thirteenth floor of the Spire. Premium, chronoshifted, arabica with pleasant chocolate infusions. A hint of jasmine. That’s what it says on the seal. Seems a little boring, don’t you think?”

“If I’m to be honest, doctor, I’m completely lost.”

Kellin shook his head. He keyed the electric kettle and fetched an aeropress from the kitchen cabinet. He then scattered cherries across the atomic scale on the encounter until a perfect zero point four ounces registered on the display. Kellin moved the beans into a hand grinder and started churning.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong DA,” Kellin said. “This morning coffee? It’s crisp. Light. Airy. The aroma after it's been grounded just kicks you awake. But it makes you pine for those halcyon days when coffee was grown in these so-called countries, don’t you think?”

“No.”

“You’re no fun,” Kellin pouted. “I’m asking a genuine question here.”

“I’m your assistant, not a clown.”

The kettle beeped and rumbled with roaring water. Kellin sifted the grounds into the bottom of the aeropress, poured in a modest bed of water, and locked the device with a stainless steel cap.

“Fine, have it your way,” Kellin said. “DA. Status.”

“Patient vitals remained stable overnight,” DA announced. “Number four–”

“Use their names please,” Kellin swirled the grounds rising to the top of the press. “I won’t remember the numbers.”

“Clarice,” DA corrected, “is experiencing acute pain in her left heel. She bumped it against a wall while strolling through the garden last night.”

“She’s been doing that more often,” Kellin mused. “The walking thing, I mean.”

“My records indicate that Pre-Reclamation humans of both wealth and old age engaged in an activity known as ‘sauntering,’” DA said, “where they would walk alone with the sole aim of contemplating their depreciated status.”

“Please never use the phrase ‘depreciated status’ ever again.”

“What might the appropriate term be then, Doctor Facher?”

“Just speak normally,” Kellin moaned, then paused. “Wait. You’re just messing with me, aren’t you?”

“I can’t believe you would accuse me of mocking a superior. If you are so curious as to the nature of Clarice’s midnight walks, all you need to do is ask.”

“Forget it,” Kellin said. “How’s Angelina?”

“Unchanged from the last diagnostic,” DA replied. “The scans show continued heightened activity during sleeping hours. She’s dreaming more than the other patients.”

“Nightmares still?” Kellin murmured. He bounced a mug between his fingers. “Okay. And Samuel?”

“Why don’t you go check on him yourself?” DA suggested. “He’s outside right now.”

“Outside? Samuel? Curious. Maybe he’s smoking again. In which case…”

“His appointment isn’t for another week, doctor. Let him have some fun.”

“Yeah well,” Kellin shrugged. “He’s also the least healthy of the bunch. You’d think he’d be confined to bed now by this point. You know, sometimes, I look at him and think, maybe bad habits actually make you stronger.”

“Don’t let them hear you say that.”

Kellin set his cup on the counter and lifted the aeropress on top of it. He pushed down on the valve accessory. There was the satisfying gust of air pressure pouring coffee into his porcelain mug. Steam rose from below and fogged up his glasses.

“I’ll go talk to him,” Kellin sighed. “About time I make my morning rounds anyway. Watch the front door for me, will you, DA? Trina’s finally coming today.”

“I don’t like her.”

“Watch the front door, DA,” Kellin repeated. “And be nice.”

A white lab coat hung above a rack at the entrance to Kellin’s office. It was too thin for the cold weather outside. Kellin much preferred the assortment of warm colored peacoats and thick parkas left by his late wife, but DA had insisted upon a code of modest professionalism. Kellin learned to wear more sweaters.

The doctor threw the lab coat over his arms and stepped out to an unoccupied lounge. When Kellin had read over the building manifest when first acquiring the hospital, he learned that it had been built during a mass epidemic. It was a makeshift facility built within a week for a rapid response to an ongoing crisis. It was then rebuilt during the Reclamation Wars with state of the art, quality of life facilities.

The lounge had been meant for hundreds of people. Now it was empty. One would think that a vacant hospital in a city where people never got sick would be a good thing, but Kellin couldn’t help but feel a little strange.

Maybe it was the fear of being out of a job soon?

“Remind me again, DA?” Kellin asked. “How many days has it been since our last new patient?”

“Eleven thousand three hundred and twenty three solar days.”

“That’s,” Kellin did the quick math, “exactly thirty one years.”

“Correct. Happy anniversary, Doctor Facher.”

“Joke all you want, DA,” Kellin said. “They’ll close this hospital before too long. Decommission you and me. Repurpose us for the Spire or something.”

“Of course,” DA said. “All things must come to an end, doctor.”

“Tell that to Minsrea.”

Kellin crossed the length of the lounge. A glass door and transparent walls gazed into a wide open courtyard. The doctor pushed against the glass and stepped outside.

The grounds were planted with gardens, cordoned into discrete sections by brown fences and heated lamps. White trilliums and hydrangea rested beneath the shadow of low hanging willows. Azaleas and evergreen magnolias marked the edges of a cobblestone path that winded through the grounds.

Kellin bathed in the scent of cloves carried by the breeze. He tread up, up a flight of old stairs that led to a lawn lying at the top of a hill. A great oak watched over the grounds. It had stood there since Kellin first arrived. Around the tree, man had placed benches and tables and a small dock over a modest pond, all manners of wooden contraptions that made the oak appear like a venerable survivor or an ancestor to unfortunate offspring.

The doctor spotted Samuel sitting upon the bench beneath the oak with his legs crossed over one another. There was a folded newspaper on his lap.

Samuel was the oldest patient in Kellin’s care, and he looked the part. He wore a thick charcoal duck jacket over an olive woolen sweater. He hunched forward, hiding his white beard and wrinkled eyelids with a fawn green flat cap. In his hands was a notebook and a fountain pen. He scribbled quite furiously for an old man.

“What you writing today, Samuel?” Kellin asked. “More poetry?”

Samuel did not look up, but Kellin heard the snickers of a mischievous child.

“My will, doctor,” Samuel laughed. “My will!”

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Paradiso


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