hadn't missed him.
His long grey hair, his long slender neck and strong upper arms, his elegant legs and perfect butt, the tattoo of a red kite on his left shoulder, with maple red wings and a gold key in its beak. He got it on their honeymoon when they stayed for a long weekend on the coast. He said it was the first thing that came to his mind when he thought of them. She never understood that, but she loved him for it anyway.
The Dupes continued to tumble and Eve continued her search for another hour. Body after body after body made its way from the gleaming slide onto the mud and dust that ran down to the lake. She counted over three hundred, but he wasn't one of them. As the new ones arrived, pink and shiny on top of the black, blue and bloated shapes of their older resting companions, the tapestry of twisted limbs would slide slowly into the lake below. Every now and then the lake would ripple as corpses would finally tip over the bank and sink into the shelter of the cool water.
It reminded Eve of the seaside arcade games that she played with her father when they took summer holidays so many years ago. Her mother would always wait outside, shunning the cacophony and lights of the arcade, but she and her father would play the old-fashioned shove penny games for hours. They would discuss intensely which slot to use, when to time the release of a coin and cheer with excitement when their strategy forced out a clattering of change below. She remembered how her hands always smelled of copper and tasted bitter afterwards.
She was woken from her daydream as a child's body began its descent along the Chute. The site was so rare that it caused Eve to gasp with shock and involuntarily put her hand over her mouth. Children almost never came down the chute, they were too young to migrate and hadn't earned their credits yet. But every now and then exceptions were made, perhaps terminal illness or an accident with no chance of recovery. Exceptions were very expensive, most people couldn't afford the chance of migrating early.
Eve watched without taking a breath as the tiny body moved slowly down. It was too light to gain enough momentum and stopped half way, causing the Chute to buck and lunge, bouncing the little rider along like a doll before it flew off the end and landed abruptly in the pile below. After a pause, Eve wiped away the tears that had emerged unexpectedly onto her cheeks.
The last figure to roll down the chute was a young woman, slender but not a girl. Her shape said that she was a mother, her breasts carried the scars of rearing and her stomach, though slim, had been distorted and stretched by at least one child. Eve noticed that she had a thick flare of beautiful red hair that flailed around her as she tumbled, flickering and flaming in the autumn sun as she avalanched her way over bodies and down into the dust.
When she finally came to a stop her hair was wrapped around her neck, an elegant necklace for her final dance, and her face turned towards Eve as if she was waiting for her response. Her legs were splayed apart, perhaps broken now, and her arms folded across her chest in a defiant lock. Eve saw the blood that had made butterflies on the inside of her thighs and dropped her head in mourning for this unknown woman, lying still on her back in the blazing sun.
She had heard from other Lifers the fate that befell some Dupes, from powerful Migrants keen to clock up a few more real life experiences to take with them, or just the kids who spent so long bolting Dupes they had lost all sense of kindness and compassion. It terrified her that all of these minds went into AarBee.
The klaxon sounded again, one long call. It echoed around the valley, a fanfare for those who had fallen, and the Chute shuddered once more and relaxed back onto the hillside. With that, Eve stood up, stretched her back and set off back down the path to the woods.
He hadn’t come.
Joy
Overjoyed with its own skill and alive with the