The Hauntings of Playing God (The Great De-Evolution) Read Online Free PDF Page B

pushes her up and down the aisles without a chance to stand in front of Elaine’s empty bed and feel sorry for herself. As she makes her way through the rows, her fingertips touch the heads and feet of the bodies she cares for. Such smooth skin. So soft. There is no scientific proof, but she has always thought that everyone, Block or not, is healthier if they have human contact. Even the simple touch of a human hand once a day.
    Maybe, she thinks, life is about the first time you touch another person, and the last. This thought is comforting.
    For one day, at least, it’s easy not to focus on her aching back as she bends over each Block. It’s easy to ignore her rumbling stomach. She knows she must be tired, must be hungry, but doesn’t feel it. She moves from bed to bed in anticipation of e-mailing Daniel as soon as she is done. She will not allow herself to stop halfway through the rows of Blocks. It would be like opening Christmas presents early. She needs something to look forward to in order to get through the day.
    Finally, when she is finished, she washes her hands and puts food into her belly. If asked the next day, she wouldn’t even be able to say what meal she ate. She has learned that there are few things you really need to focus on and many things you can get through without much thought.
    Finally, eagerly, she moves to her computer and opens her e-mail. She looks for the last time she sent him a message and frowns when she sees it has been more than a month. His latest e-mail to her, from two days before that, is still there, still waiting for a real response.
    The only thing she had written at the time was: Soooo busy. Really sorry to hear you’re alone. Wish I had time to write more. Will write again when things slow down.
    Part of her blames the lack of a response on how busy she has been. But she knows he was the final remaining caretaker at the Los Angeles group home for the last month, meaning he has been even busier than her. Yet he still found time to e-mail someone. The other part of her blames her lack of response on not knowing what to say to him. That sounds immature and childlike, she knows that. It’s not a quality she is proud to display as an old woman. She is no better than a teenage girl who has received a love note and doesn’t know how to tell a boy who is interested in her that she doesn’t share the same feelings, and so simply tried to brush him off.
    Daniel’s message had been straight forward enough. In only a few lines he had stated that the only other caretaker in the Los Angeles facility had passed away the night before, and that now he was left alone to care for roughly forty Blocks by himself. He ended the e-mail by asking how she was doing, how the Miami home was doing as a whole, and by stating that, as far as he knew, his Los Angeles group home and her Miami group home were the only two remaining in the country.
    Instead of writing anything meaningful, she had been a coward and said she was overwhelmed with her own Blocks.
    There were a lot of things she had thought to say in her response. She could have told him that not only were they the last two settlements in the States, but also that her contact in the Lisbon group home had gone quiet six months earlier and that Europe may not have anyone left either. She could have told him that her pen pal in Caracas had gone silent nine weeks ago. There was a very good chance no one was alive in South America either. As far as she knew, she and Daniel were the last two living people in the entire world.
    Except for all of their Blocks.
    Every time she has the thought about being the last person in Miami or on the East Coast, she corrects herself and includes the bodies she cares for, complete with their made-up lives and personalities.
    She wonders what Daniel will think to finally get a real response from her. She will not tell him right away that she is only replying in depth now that she is in the same situation he has been